I’ve just finished solving another Sudoku puzzle. Although I’m good at Sudokus, I struggle with giving the exact change at stores.

A few years ago, I was keen to find out why I've had trouble with some mathematic equations and counting the change at stores. I often miscalculated money and gave the wrong amount I should have paid. One day, I came across the term dyscalculia, which I wrote about here. This provided me some explanation, and relief, although I didn’t really fit into the criteria of having dyscalculia.

What puzzled me was that I did well at math in most of my school years. I struggled for a couple of years, but private lessons helped me get back on track. I remember in my high school, I got the final grade in one of the math branches and missed only one grade in another, so I wasn’t a math fool as I used to think of myself, putting myself down for a long time.

Years passed and I kept facing the same problem with validating change at stores. I convinced myself that my math skills might have deteriorated due to lack of use. Until one day, I read an article about listening fatigue, and how it affects other abilities of hearing-impaired people.

Listening fatigue is what I, as a hard-of-hearing person, suffer from because my brain works extra shifts doing the job that my ears fail to do. The ear’s job is to convert sound energy into neural signals which doesn’t happen perfectly due to damage in one part or more of the ear. Hearing only happens when all parts of an ear are healthy and capable. So when one part is damaged, the brain has to step in to dot the I’s and cross the t’s.

Brain does the job that my ears can’t do anymore, plus the jobs that brains do in people with normal hearing. Brain’s tasks include, but not limited to: filling in missing sounds, lipreading, making sense of what’s heard, processing information, following the conversation, reading facial expressions and body language, looking for logical answers, being aware of surroundings, etc.

These extra shifts are not done for just five minutes or even an hour per day. No, it’s a 24\7 job for my brain. By midday, I feel exhausted and drained. Although there’s still plenty of time in my day, I find myself too tired to pursue other activities or even check out simple tasks such as counting out change.

That article was such a reveal, providing a valid explanation for why I struggle with math. Due to years of hearing impairment without acknowledging it and realising how it took a toll on me physically, mentally and emotionally, isolation and depression became integrated parts of me.

Looking back at how long I belittled my skills and abilities and how harsh I was on myself, I feel the urge that such information should be available to all hard-of-hearing people. No one else should go through what I experienced from confusion and lack of self-confidence for such a long time, just for not understanding how hearing loss affected my daily life.