For most of us, there are a lot of bumps in the road to acceptance of our hearing loss.

Halloween marks the anniversary of the day my hearing finally bottomed out, taking with it my spirit and my resilience. I had been living with hearing loss ever since my left ear stopped working, seemingly overnight, at age 30. That first drop in my hearing came out of the blue. I was frightened at first but tests revealed no serious problem. They also revealed no cause. My hearing in the other ear easily compensated. Fine, I thought, I can live with this.

Then my good ear started to deteriorate in my 40’s. At age 52 I got two hearing aids. I wore them, and they helped. Once again I thought, Fine, I can live with this. Since the cause was unknown, however, so was the likely progression, which proved relentless.

That October, 2008, I had a flu shot. By the next day I was dizzy and nauseated. I blamed the flu shot, but my hearing had fluctuated before (always downward!), and I should have recognized the signs. By midweek I was reeling. My hearing was supersensitive and the ground under my feet kept shifting.

I live in New York City and my ENT was inconveniently about as far away in Manhattan as you could get. Friday morning, which happened to be Halloween, I took the subway to his office. Two trains, with a transfer at Times Square. Noisy and chaotic under any circumstances, but passengers in Halloween costumes added a level of surrealism. The photo here captures the way I felt. Yes, I should have taken a taxi.

Dr. Ronald Hoffman, at New York Eye and Ear, had over the years helped me through various crises with sympathy and humor. Now, in his quiet examining room, I couldn’t hear him at all. He typed his questions on his laptop – an early version of captioning. I’ve been grateful to him ever since for his thoughtfulness.

To be safe, Dr. Hoffman ordered the standard tests: another MRI, another autoimmune battery, high dose steroids in the hope it might be reversed. The hearing in my good ear came back at least partially. The hearing in the left ear was permanently gone. A year later, I got a cochlear implant.

“You’ll never be deaf,” Dr. Hoffman had reassured me at one point. Only later did I realize that he’d meant I’d never be deaf thanks to technology. It took me a long time to adjust to the c.i., but eventually I began to hear again. And with that, I began to come to terms with my loss.  The despair I felt on that Halloween day slowly gave way to an understanding that my hearing loss was part of me, and that I could live with it.

I wonder how many of us with late-onset hearing loss have a moment in time when they realized their hearing was gone and not retrievable. How long did it take to accept that it was permanent? What helped? One thing that made a huge difference for me was becoming part of the Hearing Loss Association of America. I’m president of the New York City Chapter. If you’d like to join, click here. Our meetings are free, captioned and open to all, whether or not you’re a New Yorker. Go to programs on our website to see our upcoming presentations. Or join a chapter closer to home. There’s a list on the national office’s website.

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For more about hearing loss, read my books: “Shouting Won’t Help,” and “Smart Hearing,” available at Amazon.com.