Rush Limbaugh started his show on Friday, telling how he was late getting to the studio because he overslept. His wife was out of town for some reason.
He announced he was terrified he would not wake up on time – that “there is no alarm clock in the world that can wake me up”. That may be true, but only to a point. Since he now has had cochlear implants in both ears, the nerves that hear sound are permanently disconnected from his ear drum.
However, there are millions of people with no hearing that get up for school or work every day using an alarm clock. The two main ways are a bright flashing light that causes an arousal reaction in the survival part of the brain, or a vibrating pad underneath the bed sheets
http://www.adcohearing.com/alarmclocks.html
Someone should give him a belated birthday preaent.
I suspect it is a matter of what he is used to. Tell me if you notice as I do that the older I get, the more I am a creature of habit. I am sometimes stunned at the things I do from habit that make almost no sense at all.
My sense for what it is – the cochlear implant is working exceptionally well. I noticed yesterday his speech is much improved – your ability to speak well requires that you be able to hear yourself. The 2nd cochlear implant probably has much improved his situation.
What I don’t think happened is any adaptation to the deafness. I’m going to stick my neck out and guess Rush has not learned American sign language. It was easier to hire someone to transcribe the phone calls into a keyboard than to learn sign language and hire an interpreter. Similarly, he never found out that there are tools available.
I remember exactly where I was when Rush announced he was deaf. His story was less than truthful. He was already wearing heavy duty hearing aids in both ears. While hearing loss does fall off a cliff when you’re down to the last few percent, he didn’t just wake up one morning and go from normal hearing to complete deafness. He was hiding the problem for a long time – and in retrospect explained why he took so few calls and rarely engaged in actual dialog with callers or have guests
I actually drove out to Dan’s bake sale in Fort Collins Colorado (From Michigan). I wondered at the time why he stopped doing public appearances that he previously called the “Rush to Excellence Tour”. While security was an issue, the news he was losing hearing seemed a reasonable explanation.
I would’ve expected that at each contract renewal, Premiere would have wanted a physical. Hearing loss is an occupational hazard of radio people – so Premiere knew or some elaborate deception was going on.
I’m glad it worked out well. I remember him being very emotional about Gallaudet University fighting for deaf parents to raise deaf children – and not getting cochlear implants (which were brand new) and the deaf parents being nudged outside the deaf community.