Originally Posted by spike08:
“Oh god why do I read her stuff she annoys me and makes me angry.
The RS stuff is very very badly written fiction that a 12 year would be embarassed to produce.
I still don't believe she's as deaf as she says and having a slight hearing loss myself I find it sickening that she claims to be deaf now. What will it be next week, blind, mute?
Her usual men are horrible rant is just the ramblings of a mad woman at this point. How is she getting away with it?
And on a slightly bitchy note is she wearing tracksuit bottoms in the hearing test pictures?”
BIB: I've read a few comments on various forums debating this point. The thing is, she may well be as deaf as she painted in her article, but because she's 'cried wolf' so many times about other things, and exaggerated or invented 'the truth' (as she sees it) about other things, she could be being doubted now, when, in fact, for once she's telling the truth.
I work with older teenagers and adults with a variety of learning difficulties, including partial or full deafness, and one of my best friends is profoundly deaf (and yet she is a musician and teaches piano - one of her pupils is my daughter!) and I recognise a lot of what Liz writes in terms of explaining how it 'is' and how it 'feels' to have hearing loss and how it is when you start to use hearing aids like the article describes.
So there are two possibilities - either Liz has done her research well and managed to recreate the world of someone who is living with moderate to severe hearing loss in both ears to a 't', or she really does have moderate to severe hearing loss (caused by measles, if that bit is true). Talking of the measles bit, if ever there was a timely reminder that having the MMR jab is far preferable to the risk of catching measles without it, then this story is it, whether Liz is telling the truth or not. Parents these days have no concept of what a dangerous disease measles used to be - at best you were very poorly, but eventually recovered with no long-term ill-effects, but at worst it caused deafness, blindness, brain damage. We are so used to drs being able to cure most things these days that the danger of catching measles has been overlooked. If nothing else, this article could be useful in persuading parents to make sure their children are immunised.
I do understand that anyone who is familiar with Liz in her other guises, now reading the article about the hearing aids, may doubt the veracity of her article, even more that they might feel aggrieved that she may be 'jumping on the bandwagon' of anyone, including themselves, who may also be living with some degree of hearing loss. But on the other hand Liz hasn't just plucked the hearing loss out of thin air like she has other things for her diary - the hearing loss is a long-standing thing she has mentioned for years. Now, she may or may not have been making it up for years, and I'm usually as cynical as the next person, but if there's the slightest chance Liz may be telling the truth then she should be given the benefit of the doubt before she's just shot down in flames just because she is who she is and usually writes what she does. She has a proven track record for rewriting history and making up stories to fill column inches, yes, but she is still underneath it all a real person who has a real life - some of which IS the Liz who seeps through in her writing. Unless we have proof, who are any of us to say partial hearing loss isn't a part of the real Liz who seeps through occasionally?
As I say, the way Liz describes her experience are almost word-for-word the way that some of my hearing impaired friends and students have described theirs to me. Obviously not everyone with hearing loss experiences the same things in the same way, so I can understand comments like "but I've got partial hearing loss and it's nothing like Liz describes" or "I've started using digital hearing aids and I had a completely different experience" because every person experiences the hearing loss and the effect of using digital, or analogue, hearing aids in a different way, and although of course large groups of people can have largely similar experiences, even within those similarities there will be many minor differences which make every patient experience unique.
So I suppose what I'm saying is that, in this instance, I'm erring on the side of giving Liz the benefit of the doubt. It's sad that she's shot herself in the foot over the years by making things up so that people doubt ANYTHING she writes, but it's too late to do much about that now. I just like to try and see things from both sides and am reluctant to damn someone without proof one way or the other - proof which is, I know, unlikely to be provided in any way that will satisfy Liz's harshest critics, but proof which nonetheless is the only thing she should, and could, be damned by.