How would you choose between loss of hearing or eyesight?

hearing, mine's half gone anyway.

Mine too, but hearing loss gets you neither sympathy nor understanding.

"Why don't you pay more attention?"

"Your hearing is a bit selective, isn't it? You hear just what you want to hear."

Hearing, my good friend is always saying something about how I never pay attention to her or somesuch. I wasn't really listening, but I figure if they are going to accuse me of it I might as well have an excuse.

you're right Roger, even my mother who knows the results of the doc visits says those things to me.

Well, given that I amlosing my hearing, I had better go with losing that, eh? Oh - my sight is terrible, too...waaaaah!

But, I really would rther lose hearing - seems to me that life is easier and better with no hearing than no sight....and you can learn to sign and such - and get subtitles and TTY telephones and all that.

I have some fair sized loss of both; ahhhh, I prefer to dodge question and maintain what I have.

Gosh. We're all half deaf.
Much rather lose hearing, too.
Always wondered when these questions pop up if anyone would really rather lose sight...

Yeah, what a bummer not being able to check out Sophia's new avatar.

Life wouldn't be worth it without music.

I say hearing as well.

Um, life is still worth it, I think. Music and vision continue in the mind. Still, I appreciate them.

I think y'all know my answer.

Roger 'n' littlek, you can quote me to the doubters, that there are situations in which understanding comes much more easily than others even if the decibel level remains the same. For example, a conversation, with a steady back-and-forth on an interesting subject, is infinitely easier than a monologue or an out-of-the-blue question.

I can't decide. I used to be very sure of my answer to this, but I'm wobbling. I used to feel that it would be easier to cope and move on after losing vision, but I don't know any more. If pressed to make an immediate decision, I'd probably still pick losing vision, but it wouldn't be as 'easy' a decision.

With a hearing loss (is it catching in this group?), I will go with that.
I agree that losing music would be one of the worst results of hearing loss, but to see my loved ones is soo important. But then, so is hearing their voices.
These hypothetical questions are interesting, but they can drive me crazy. I just hope that I never entirely lose either.

So, most here know that I have long time retinitis pigmentosa, a somewhat unusual eye disease. It wasn't diagnosed though until I was in my late forties, somewhat at my own insistance in going to the Jules Styne Eye Institute for one of my routine eye checks, because I suspected that I had it. Actually, they said I didn't at first. Anyway, when it was confirmed I went into a spiral, as I equilibrated re not driving after twilight, and some other stuff, like not working at big firms downtown, which I was then in line with.

After all that panic, it hasn't gotten worse, and that is now fifteen years ago. In fact, I myself think it was a kind of birth defect, and hasn't gotten ostensibly worse ever, only my attitude has changed with info. There is some med data that this may be true.) But recently I have cataracts and am edging into borderline glaucoma. Ha, this might kill some others, but I see these processes as fixable, or temporizable. Just.... the immediate mishigas is a bit deterring.

Have had tinnitus since I was studying for my boards back in 1986. I suppose it is worse, and I say "what?" a lot, and do have hearing loss.

A few of us from A2K and Abuzz met in NY earlier in the year
at a lovely place for lunch, and all three of us were somewhat 'hard of hearing'. Actually it was comfortable since we understood how each other felt, and soon enough the room cleared a bit and we took command of it.

Well, both losses are great. Hard to choose one in conjecture. I will pick sight to save, in theory.

An important qualifier -- if it weren't for sign/ deaf culture, it would be a MUCH more difficult decision. Ray Charles said something like "Being blind cuts you off from things, being deaf cuts you off from people", and that's not true with sign, and interpreters. Without, though... whole other story.

Technology affects that, too... captioning, CART (basically captioning an everyday situation like a meeting), etc. But it is the ability to just interact with people in real time, in the same mode (ASL) that is especially satisfying to the soul. (And why I get so frustrated when I have a hard time finding people who are simultaneously interesting and fluent in ASL... sigh.)

Osso, is that related to what you said about having your pupils dialated? Lets more light in than usual? What are the practical affects besides not being able to see (...well or ... at all?) after twilight?

The day I had my eyes dilated was a day of checking how the cataracts were doing. (They were doing fine, huh.)

We all see colors less well in the dark and probably all see them better when eyes are dilated (of that I am not sure). It passes, within eight or so hours.

For me, and this is nothing new, my dark adaptation is a lot slower than other people's. Thus at nineteen, I was slow to follow friends to seats in movie theaters. In my twenties, I sat down at a bar in Tijuana with a group of friends who were visiting with a friend's family and we all went out... anyway, I sat on the floor and hadn't yet ordered a drink.
I tripped on a tree root walking to the entrance to the Greek Theater, might have been twenty eight. It was only through an accumulation of experiences where other people got along better than I did at night that I was clued into understanding that my eyes adapted much slower. Aside from timing, there is a loss of peripheral vision, as rods are the first eye elements affected in the retinal breakdown in RP.

I lived most of my life in an urban situation, so the main streets were generally very brightly lit, and even my neighborhood streets were not badly lit, and I could get along, and in retrospect so could other people get along with me on the road. It seems that I have always compensated by looking around, turning my head, or using my eye muscles, slightly more than others. Still at some point I just knew something was wrong. The times I drove on a sort of country road were rare and short, say for a half block somewhere in the Valley... and I didn't have a gauge to see how others saw.

When I studied land arch when I was about forty, I remember going across campus after class at night always keyed to where the rail was for those steps...

Anyway, my visual field measurements have not gotten worse, which is a surprise... as once I knew I had it I looked the background med papers up, and the news was not good on that re the usual course of the disease. My present opthamologist doesn't expect them to worsen from RP... so to that extent, a lot of my fear didn't pan out. But in practical terms I stopped driving before twilight, and it changed my lifestyle and even my marriage. Where before I was bringing in the money in med technology and then in landscape design and was on a good career track, suddenly I couldn't expect to stay for late conferences, go to city design reviews at night, etc.

As I regrouped to consider things I was more interested in anyway, like painting, and writing, and writing about urban design, etc., and didn't take projects that would set me far afield... not only did my work zoom down, so did my marriage. Just about the time I learned and was dealing with all this, my husband, who I had been supporting in his writing through many but not all of our years together, received a moderate inheritance, and somehow... I got less interesting.

Not to blame him, exactly, but all these matter meshed.

On a pinpointable level re practical aspects... one of the key times of the day for piquant beauty has always been around last light...there is such a great sense of moment and surrounding. Looking around me has (neer mind my eye stuff) has gotten only more interesting as I notice more with time; but for me last light is usually a time for really paying attention to where the next step leads... instead of the lambency of the scene. (Lambency, I made that up.)

This is not all bad. In trade, I might have a heightened appreciation.

Oh my gosh...if I had to choose I would pick complete hearing loss. Without eyesight I wouldn't be able to use my computer and besides I never turn the speakers on anyway.