Somewhat Silent

Hello All,

I am Natalya aka barakta. I have been reading and commenting on somewhatsilent for a while. I live in Sheffield, UK, with my girlfriend of four years Kim, in a small rented house. Kim is an electrical engineer with an extrodinary gift for bodgery and sarcasm. We are both hoarders of almost anything electrical, especially marginal technology which needs tender loving kicking to keep it alive.

I have a severe/profound bilateral mixed conductive/sensorineural hearing loss which I have had since birth (audiograms at http://www.barakra.org.uk/stuff/audiograms/). I wear a bone anchored hearing aid (BAHA) and have had that since 1992 (http://www.entific.com). Before that I wore an ‘alice band’ bone conduction aid made by Phonak.

I was mainstream educated for better or worse thanks to education authorities being obligated to provide appropriate support systems for me. Despite the first bout of vertigo hitting during my exam years I escaped school hell with moderately good GCSE grades specialising in sciences and two foreign languages. I then spent three fabulous years at a Roman Catholic 6th Form College which I loved gaining myself three crappy A-Levels which got me into The University of Sheffield to read chemistry. I hated my chemistry degree and after a year of failing and poor support from my tutors I jumped ship to the Information Studies department where I completed a degree in Information Management.

I am currently not working due to my vestibular system having failed on me for the second time (the first was while I was at school). I am currently trying medication to stabilise the vertigo that I have. I am also concerned that this time I have suffered damage to my inner ear resulting in increased tinnitus and hearing loss. I have an audiometry appointment in two weeks which will hopefully give me reliable information one way or another about my hearing.

Five years ago I started learning British Sign Language which was a lifelong ambition of mine. I had taught myself and a friend how to fingerspell, but experienced hostility from other children whenever we ’signed’. I passed stage 1 extremely easily, so much so, that the examiner thought I had been to a ‘deaf’ school and been signing for years. I had a few years break due to shoulder problems before starting stage 2 classes with kim last year. We are currently in our 2nd year of stage 2 which is going well if a little exhaustingly due to three hour classes!

Once I get the vestibular system knocked into shape I will get back into the job market and seek out the quickest and most useful way of getting back in academia. I am hoping the Department of Work and Pensions (social security) will allow me to do some distance learning ICT *spit* courses while I am still in recovery.

I am sure there is more that I could say about myself, but I think this gives you enough to go on for now.