For those who are not familiar with SCUBA, it is an abbreviation for Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus. It has enabled millions of divers to explore underwater for an extended period of time, and I’m one of them. Well, I used to be one of them, because I have not done any SCUBA diving for more….
I was a graduate student at Dr. James Saunders’ laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania in the late 1980s and early 1990s. At that time, the laboratory focused on both the structural and functional aspects of hearing loss and recovery in chickens. The laboratory had other research interests such as the structural aspects of middle ear bone….
Eavesdropping was (and still is) nearly impossible with my daughters Rachel and Hannah. They would speak to each other in front of their deaf parents (that’s me and my wife Denise), and they knew (and still know) we couldn’t catch what they spoke about. On the opposite end, we parents would sign to each other,….
More than 30 years ago, I was in my twenties. I had been going to the Hamptons every summer. Sometimes in the evening, I’d go to a dance/bar place such as JAG in East Hampton and Danceteria in Bridgehampton (both of which were closed under suspicious circumstances). Most of the time, I was usually alone,….
You know there is an annual National Spelling Bee where every contestant listens to a spoken word and then after getting clues (such as hearing the word in a spoken sentence), he or she gets to spell that word. If the contestant spells it correctly, he or she stays. If not, he or she is….
It has been more than one month since I posted my last blog. Well, I’ve got some stories to tell you about my deafness. Yeah, I did write a few college papers about my experiences going to a school for the deaf and then mainstreaming into the New York City Public School System, which was….
This is one of my favorite postcards. You see a chicken jumping in the air, and it says “Ich bin ein Adler!” three times. That sentence is translated to “I am an eagle!” The chicken is an important animal model for inner ear repair (including hair cell regeneration) and subsequent hearing recovery in the acoustically….
An eminent ENT (ear, nose, and throat) doctor once said to me at an informal gathering at a conference during the summer of 2013 … “You have a bad attitude.” Why would he say that to me? We were talking about cochlear implants, and he somehow asked me if I was considering one for myself. ….
Huh? I replied to my dad. That’s what happened over 30 years ago. I had been working as a research technician at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary (MEEI) after my college graduation. I also had begun my weekly attendance at Crossroads, a bar in the vicinity of Boston University – that’s how I had….
Nearing the end of the month of July 2020, we visited our old house in North Bethesda, a suburbs of Rockville, Maryland. We plan to put the house on the market next month – we’ve been renting it for nearly nine years, and it’s time to say good bye to it. We then decided to have lunch. So,….