My name is Lori. I was born in a small town in Indiana right on the Wabash River on Dec. 28, 1969. The date of my birth was a Sunday and from what I have been told there were blizzard conditions. When I was born I had a very full head of black hair, the doctor called me a Black-eyed Susie.

I grew up an only child of 2 teachers. My mother taught forth grade at Vigo Elementary and my Father was a professor of Physics at the local University. To say the least, my mother still corrects my grammer and my dad still professes that Math isn't negotiable.

When I was 5 I went to Kindergarden at Vigo where my mother taught. My teacher was Mrs. McClure. All I really remember from that time period was I had to miss the first week of classes because I had injured my ankle and couldn't walk. To be honest I was not very bright. I had gone Bicycle riding with a neighbor girl. We were riding double. The seat was one of the old banana seats. Well to make this short, I was barefoot and ended up with my right foot in the spokes. Seven stitches later, I was smart enough to know I'd never do that again.

First grade through third grade I went to Washington Elementary. This was in my school district. My first grade teacher was Ms. Humphrys. I don't think I liked her because I remember scrawling a note to that effect at the bottom of one of my papers. The student teacher intercepted it and thought I didn't like her.

Second Grade- Hummm, had 2 teachers. The first left I think at christmas to marry out west. The second I can picture but I can't remember either of their names.

Third Grade was a hellish year for me. It was the begining of a lot of problems. What stands out the most is my teacher announcing to the whole class that I and 2 other students would get D's and F's in 4th grade. This same teacher also told me there wasn't a Santa Claus and that my parents didn't love me. You'll be glad to know she retired from teaching a few years later because of burnout.

Forth grade through sixth I went to LaSalle Elementary. This is were the Learning Disabled (LD) program was. I had tested into the program the year before. Forth Grade was when we learned why school was so hard for me. I wasn't LD! I had tunnel vision. I could see only 1 word at a time. So everytime I looked away from my page I would have to seach for my place all over again. Luckily, my parents found an Optometris(SP) that treated this problem. By years end I could see the world around me and I tested out of the LD program. My forth grade teacher was Mrs. Day.

Fifth grade was interesting in that my teacher was also one of my mothers friends. Talk about word gettinng home quick. LOL. Her name was Mrs. Davison. It was during this year that we learned I was also hearing impaired. It wasn't a significant loss but enough of one that it was noticable on the speech/ hearing tests.

Also during fifth grade, I lost my paternal grandmother and a maternal uncle. That was a very trying time in my life. My grandmother lived in the same town as my family. She was who took care of me for most of my life when I needed babysat. Her name was Lula Sarah Ellen Merritt Stephenson. I was very close to her. The christmas before she died I begged her to come over christmas morning. I even waited until she could come to open my presents. To this day, I think somehow I knew that in a little over 2 months she wouldn't be on earth anymore. She died Feb.11, 1981 and was buried on Valentines Day.

My maternal uncle died May 18, 1981. His name was William Dean Emmons. But everyone called him Billy. He was a Special Child. He was born with Down Syndrome. But that didn't slow Billy down much. He was a born Comic, cussed a blue streak and made one of his older brother chauffer him around, while he sat in the back with his brothers' date. He also had a love affair with Pop, "Big Red" soda pop that is. He was always telling my grandfather to get him Pop. He never to my knowledge called my grandmother mother or mom. He had a special name for her and grandpa. But he had special names for about everything I thing. Bra's were cross your heart hearts. Tie's were Tic Ties. Eddie Rabbit singer of "I Love a Rainy Night" was Peter Rabbit. And his school Principal Mr. Babcock was sometimes affectionately called "Asshole".

Billy died when his malformed heart valve gave out at the age of 17. Almost 20 years later, I still miss his laugh, his smile and his love.

Sixth Grade was not fun. I had a teacher who loved sports, which meant every other day we had to go play softball. I was awful. I might have been seeing better but my coordination from years of not being used in the right ways was terrible. I struck out more times than I care to remember and my teacher wouldn't let me forget it. During this year my hearing made a darastic drop. So I was forced to sit in the front of the class which drew even more ridicule from the other students. And made me also the teachers scapegoat. He wasn't very sympathetic. Today he is a principal. I hope he's better at that than he was at being a teacher.

Zooming right along at break neck speeds.... The JR- SR high years. The main thing to happen to my life during this time period was my hearing kept droping. In 7th grade, I had to start wearing a hearing aid. I had my first hearing surgery while in 9th Grade. Dr. Miyamoto at Riley Children Hospital removed the stapes from my left ear and put in a prosthesis. Sadly, that surgery failed to restore any of the hearing I had lost and actually took some away. By the time I was Jr in High school we were ready to try another surgery. This one was on my right ear. Dr. Miyamoto removed scar tissue from the bones. Again it didn't help. A year later he tried again. It still didn't help.

During my High School years I took band and was a sorprano in the school choir. I went to solo and essemble contest 3 times for voice. I took 2 first and one 2nd place. I also was in 3 school plays; Showboat, Brigadoon and the King and I. My senior year I also did a play with out Community theater "Olde Town Players". The play was "A Christmas Carole". I was Belinda.

I graduated from High School on Friday the 13th of May, 1988. And shortly thereafter had surgery on my left elbow. I had to have some of my radial head removed because it had grown in the wrong place and I wasn't able to turn my left hand palm up because of it. This is the only one of my correctional surgeries that seems to have at least partially worked.

The College years were probably schoolwise the best. I was a Biology major. I graduated in July of 1992 with a B.S. in Biology from the University of Evansville. But that's not the end of my schooling. I went the next year to my hometown University and did pre-requisit work for a nursing degree. I took one year of the R. N. program before I decided I didn't have enough hands or enough ears to see me through. I was making myself sick. It might have helped if I hadn't had yet another hearing surgery on my right ear in the winter of 1993. Dr. Miyamoto thought that with the use of Laser he could correct my right ear. There was just a 2% chance that it would fail. Well, I blew my prothesis after becoming violently sick after surgery. In May, 1993, 5 months later he went in and fixed that problem. But my hearing never returned in my right ear. Today I am basically completely deaf in my right ear and have about 10 % hearing in my left. With hearing aides I hear about 50% of what is said around me.

After nursing school, I tried to get into Occupational Therapy but never made the exclusive program cut. That was in 1994/95. After, that stint I stopped doing the college thing for a while. I worked as a CNA at a local nursing home. It was gratifying work but it was also very hard, demanding and everyone backstabbed you in the blink of an eye. It also paid nearly nothing. I did this for almost 3 years.

August 6, 1996 is a day that will forever be etched in my mind. It's the day my hearing went away totally. It was very frightening to just stop hearing. I had lived in a hearing world. I never learned sign language or how to lip read. Communication was not something I could handle. The only solice I had was the written word. Would you believed I tried to keep working at the nursing home being completely deaf? I made it through Oct. 31st of 1996. Shortly before that date there had been a fire Alarm go off. The only reason I knew was because of the strobe lights. I couldn't hear the sirens or the patients call lights and I was completely alone on 2 halls with 44 patients depending on me. Scared me so bad when I though of how I was endangering the patients more than helping them that I went on Medical leave of Absence. I was still Deaf as of Feb 1, 1997 so I went in and quit. That was the day I had to quit or return to work. I was in no shape to return.

From Aug, 1996 through Jan, 1997 my hearing would fluctuate up to hearing for a week or so at a time. I'd get hopeful and it would then crash again. From Nov 21st to I think Dec. 13th my hearing was sort of up but it fluctuated wildly during the days. December 13th it went away again and stayed away for the most part until February 3rd. The 3rd is the day we learned my hearing aid was messed up. Once it was fixed the hearing world returned to me. But the last 6 months had been at great emotional cost. I was angry, hurt and confused. I stopped believing in anything. I kept waiting foor the other shoe to fall. It took until July, 1997 before I found hope again and started to believe good things could happen.

Aug, 1997 a little over a year after I went completely deaf I went back to College. I graduated in May of 1999 with an AS degree in Graphic Design. I may well be the happiest I have been in my life up to this point. I liked my classes. I did pretty well in them.

From July of 1999 til Sept of 2001 I looked for work in Graphic design. I had maybe 5 interviews in 2 years. After 2 years I was complete disenchanted with trying to find a job in GD. I was became very self-sefeating... Why would anyone want a short-fat-ugly-deaf girl to work for them?

Even 5 years after having lost my hearing for 6 months I still couldn't and maybe still cannot get past waiting for the other shoe to fall. I live in fear of everything. I fear making friends because if my hearing goes again who will remain? Last time I lost everyone. Even my own parents treated me cruelly at times. I will always remember my mother pinching my lips shut because I was talking too loudly in church... Pain and anger are deep wounds.

My parents left the town where I was born in July of 1998.They both retired. My mother after 30 years as an elementary teacher and my father after 31 years working as a professor. They moved to an even smaller hole in the wall. Let's just say it is the birthplace of one of the biggest names in the NBA, Larry Bird. My mother is from the same area and 4 of her sisters and brothers plus her mother live in the area. So mom and dad moved and left me behind to finish my Graphic Design Degree.

In 2000 my hearing decided to flip-flop again for several weeks at a time. Scared me terribly as now I had no one in town as a support. If I got hurt or anything bad happen it would take over an hour for anyone to get to me. I gave in and said okay I'll move to the same town as you are (My parents area.) Thus I boxed up my 31 years accumulation of garbage and moved to my own home. I still didn't have a job... I still had no friends that didn't exist off the internet. I still was isolated and lonely. But at least I now had family near me.

My mother doesn't understand how much the internet means to me. It gave me freedom from my hearing loss. It allows me to live and have some sort of life and value when without it... well let's not go to where I think I'd be now if I hadn't gotten the internet.

Unfortunately when I moved (or perhaps it is fortunately) I had to get a new Vocational Rehabilitation counselor. When this happen.... to put it bluntly shit hit the fan. Because I wasn't actively looking for work they were going to drop me as a client. I want a job but was plain tired and as I said before had become very down on myself. I needed time to heal and build up what little self-esteem I had left.

After much going back and forth VR said they'd keep me as a client if and only if I went to the Indiana School for the Deaf and Learned Sign Language. Oh joy... not... I didn't want to do this... I was so angry that I was being made to do this. Learning ASL to me meant I was accepting defeat... that my hearing had won and I was going to have to face being deaf. How the hell do I do that? How could I even think about doing that? For 9 Months I tried to figure out away out of this. Eventually it became obvious there was no way out of it and so here I am... Taking ASL sort of at ISD... I'm not actually taking ASL at the Indiana School for the deaf (ISD). I am taking ASL at Vincennes University who's campus for the ASL program happens to be on the grounds of the ISD.

The first 8 weeks I nashed my teeth and felt a lot of anger. I didn't want to be there. Of course the good girl in me didn't revolt too much. I did and do at least attempt to make decent grades. I just cursed a lot under my breath and cried a lot of bitter tears. I am taking 2 classes this semester. ASL I which as it turns out I do like learning. The other... well it's a deaf communities class. I adore all my professors. I like the program chairperson. I like ASL but I deplore the communities class. It's not the class actually but the book. It's geared towards hearing people about born deaf people and doesn't take into account anyone that is somewhere in the purgatory of between worlds. I cried almost nightly trying to read this book. It hurt me so badly being told that "ALL DEAF don't think deafness is a handicap" (Paraphrase and my interpertation). MY heaing is a handicap! It has been my undoing and the cause of 80% of all the pain and hurt I have endured in my life. It is taking everything I have to make it through this class with a decent grade.

This semester I am taking ASL 2 and Deaf Careers. I'm not doing great in either class. Turns out last semesters teacher for ASL 1 played more than he taught so I'm behind. I now have a tutor who is helping me i day a week to try and catch up. I still adore all my teachers even if one sometimes drives me nuts because she won't let me finger spell.

This is where I am right now. I no longer regret or feel angry that I am learning ASL. It has opened the door to a world that I needed to learn about and given me some new friends that I'd not trade for anything. The only problem is what happens when I finish? I won't be able to go back to living this life of isolation. I have no idea how I will function through my fears or what will happen next. But at least I now know my hearing is not the end of all. Others live through this and have happy normal lives just a silent lives.

This is the bases of my life. If you click on any of the other pages. You will learn more about what makes me tick. Who and what I love and several other things of interest.

Thank you for taking the time to read my world!

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