Isolation of Deafness

As i am hard of hearing myself and i am currently waiting for further tests with Arrianna to see if she too will have hearing problems i feel it is a good time to share my experience with you. I have been deaf since birth, When i was 8 years old i was given hearing aids, this for me was to late as i had already adapted to life with out them. My deafness meant i had to have a lot of time off school which left me falling behind everyone else and i never really caught up, At school i never had many friends i attended two different primary schools the first one was not a nice experience it was a small country school with three classes, as i reached the final class which was taught by the head of the school i was given additional equipment in the form of a radio aid these are now called listening devices, It was a very heavy piece of equipment made of two parts one i had to wear and the other was supposed to be worn by the teacher. My teacher at the time refused to wear it, one day i forgot to put on my part of it equipment and she told me off in front of the whole class, it was a very embarrassing and humiliating experience which i can still picture today.Eventually the bulling became so bad i was moved from the school to another school, Again i was singled out never making friends and i spent my break times following the dinner lady around as i was just so scared of being on my own and did not know how to mix with other children. I was given a smaller device by now but again it still left me with head aches and feeling very tired. When i left the primary school and went on to secondary i was put with those who used to bully me at my first primary school, this brought back the problems faced at the first school but also made new ones to. If i wore my hearing aids i would get pinched in the head, Shouted at, people would come up to me and flick my hearing aids, i was hit with bags and pushed down the stairs, Going home on the bus i would have coins thrown at me stuff put in my hair as well as name calling being tripped up and other forms of physical and mental abuse. I just hated school and no helped me, teachers did not want to know and dismissed this as school life. This has effected me in two ways now 1. i find it very hard to make friends or to talk to people 2. has left me with a fear of my hearing aids. Having problems like this makes going out hard if there is a crowd hearing is hard, going out to a restraunt too can be tricky everyone  talking at once, there are so many times when its an issue you never really free from it, even at home you miss to hear the door bell, phone and the TV is a pain with out subtitles. Worst of all for me is not hearing the children, Talking in the car is extreamly hard work and i try to avoid it. On the other side it can be hard to communicate with someone who is deaf, here are a few tips Always talk clearly, stand in front of them be patent and calm. repeat what you say and never say it doesn't matter,  With Arrianna i am hoping for good news we are going back to hospital this week for further tests, so we will no more then. in the mean time fingers crossed.