Life After Deaf

From a renowned media critic to a man with sudden and full hearing loss, Noel Holston ran the gauntlet of diagnoses, health insurance, and cochlear implant surgery.

On a spring night in 2010, Noel Holston, a journalist, songwriter, and storyteller, went to bed with reasonably intact hearing. By dawn, it was gone, thus beginning a long process of hearing-restoration that included misdiagnoses, an obstinate health-insurance bureaucracy, failed cochlear-implant surgery, and a second surgery that finally worked. He negotiated the gauntlet with a wry sense of humor and the aid of his supportive wife, Marty. Life After Deaf details his experience with warmth, understanding, and candor. It’s the story not only of his way back to the world of the hearing, but of a great marriage that weathered serious testing. Their determination and resilience serve as a source of inspiration for all.

Life After Deaf is not just for the more than forty million people in the United States alone who cope with some form of hearing loss, but is also for their wide circles of friends, family, caregivers, and audiologists. This highly readable book will be an invaluable guide and source of hope for the large number of baby boomers now handling hearing loss.

Noel Holston is a Pulizter Prize nominee whose writing has appeared in more than one hundred publications, including the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times,Huffington Post, and New York Daily News. He lost most of his hearing in 2010. Thanks to cochlear implant surgeries, therapy, and more than a little help from his wife and friends, he continues to write, act, and tell stories. He lives in Athens, Georgia, with his wife, singer-actress Marty Winkler.