Fear and Loathing in the Cage.

They take you to the cage. It's a small room with padded walls.   They must think the walls protect them if the animal caught inside lashes out.

"Put them on and pay attention" they say.
"When you hear anything: a beep, a growl, a hrshshs, click the button." they instruct and turn around.
They leave and close the door.
You feel claustrophobic.

You are alone in the room, staring through a small window at the person feeding sounds to you, testing your hearing.
Mocking you.

You are here for what they medically call "an audiogram", a hearing test.  When your ears are fucked, this is a test that you know you can't pass. You know you shouldn't think in these terms.   Nothing that happens here says anything relevant about you beyond having a disability.
Yet, you feel like a failure after every one of these.

This is just the first part, the second part is the worst.

Same headset, same rules but with a twist.
Have you ever played the " telephone game"?
A kid whispers a world into a kid's next to him and that kid to the next and so on.   The last kid must say the word he heard and the other kids laugh because it's such a different world than the first.   The first one laughs the most though, the last one doesn't laugh at all.
It's a bit like that only you are playing with yourself and the words are simple, ones you use everyday.  
OH, and I'm the last kid.

A stentorian voice will enunciate words and you need to repeat them.   He - always a he - is talking clearly and without accent, like a machine god laughing at your impotence.
"Salami" it sends to you..."Tzunami?" you ask.
"Mother" it says...."mather?.. mother?" you guess.

You can't look the doctor in the eyes and you chuckle at the stupid words you come up with but in reality, it's shame you feel.  It's disgust at the futility of these tests that are pushed upon you all the time.  You wonder, what the fuck is the point?
But you'll be back anyway.  You have to.

When it's over they give you a card with the evaluation.  It's a little graph, like a kid's drawing because they doctor writes every line manually, usually with a crayon.   It shows exactly, carbon on paper, how fucked you are.
You know what to expect, of course, but you hope for a second that maybe, it got a little better than last time.
It hasn't.

When you get out, you pass by a kid with such severe hearing loss, his mother is not even trying to talk at him, no matter how load, just direct him to the cage.   The kid seems happy and ready to play.
You are remembered that, always, it could be worse.  And that your attitude can change the meaning of the experience.   You try to smile as you get out of the clinic and into the world.

Sounds awash on you and you try to be grateful that you can hear these, that you can communicate, that you are, still, almost normal.
You can hold on to this realization for a while.
"I'm lucky, I'm lucky" , you repeat like a mantra and for a while you believe it..

Until you are back in the cage.