Hello. My name is Dianah. I am studying to be a nurse at the College of Nursing and it is now my second year. 

Sometimes I like to walk along the streets and listen to the soft breeze of the wind. Sometimes I stroll among the bushes in the garden and stretch my ears to hear the birds' chirps. It gives me so much comfort everytime I can still hear those sounds because it reminds me that I still have my hearing. It never occurred to me that hearing could actually go bad for someone as young as me. I'm already wearing glasses so it shocks me that I can be impaired in yet another one of my senses. It just never crossed my mind. When did it happen? Well I'm sure it has progressed since I was 15 but there was an event which lead me to realise it... 1 month ago.

I was sitting in my tutorial class and we were told to go visit a hearing agency to assess the population risk of hearing loss. Along with my classmates, we entered the small building and sat facing a proper-looking lady. She was a kind soul but I noticed she had that aura around her that I just didn't want to mess with. Let's call her Anna. Well Anna went straight onto her task of explaining to us the logistics of every hearing genetic problem she has encountered. I noticed halfway through the interview that she was wearing hearing aids and it hit me that's a significant reason why she is so passionate with her work. Long story short, it was a session I learnt quite a lot from because despite knowing of hearing loss and having a distant cousin suffering from it, my exposure to the whole idea was anything but familiar.

Post-interview, my classmates and I sat together to discuss what we had learnt and to prepare for our presentation to the class. Josh suggested we all did a listening test to see how 'strained' our hearing had got after going to all those concerts. Of course, I had never been to one so I laughed along with them and assumed my results would be fine. Except that it wasn't.

I'm not going to go into the technicalities of it but there is a hearing range of frequencies that we humans should be able to hear. At the young age of 19, we should be at near peak in terms of our hearing abilities. During the test, they started joking that they could no longer hear the high frequencies but it really shocked me because from the beginning I could not hear anything at all.

Something sharp seemed to stab my heart and I felt desperate emotions surge around me. Am I getting hearing loss?