Siblings grow closer through life changing circumstance

When I was two and a half years old, my little sister Toryn was born. After about six months of her being home with us, we realized something was up. She wasn’t noticing anything, even when a loud noise happened she wouldn’t react. Immediately we knew something was wrong. In time we found out that she was bilaterally deaf.

About two months later, the four of us in our family went down to Palo Alto. The next day my eight-month-old sister went into surgery to get a cochlear implant. 

For the next couple of days, she had a purple headband on and I kept wondering why, so naturally I asked my mom and I found out that she had surgery. About two days later, we went back to see Dr. Joseph Robertson, who had done the surgery. He said the surgery went well and was a success.

That whole day my dad and I spent the day waiting in a stand by room. But once she was done, we ended up being able to go home. For the next two months, my mom and sister took trips back to San Francisco periodically to get everything figured out and make sure it was all working well while my dad was working.

So I ended up having a babysitter, (who now we call our grandma). Naturally, I got super close with her because we spent a lot of time together for the first part of my life. Always having someone around who was not blood related to me lead me to feel abandoned. It made me think that my parents did not love me or they loved Toryn more because they were never around. This lead me to resent my sister for several years of my life.

Up until I was 12 years old, I was mad at Toryn. I was upset because I felt as though she had taken my parents away from me for part of my childhood. I thought she received special treatment.

As the years have gone by, my anger towards her has lessened and now disappeared. If you were to talk to her today you would have no idea that she is deaf, she talks normal, she can hear artificially, and you would think she was a normal person. But, if she were to take off her implants she could not hear a thing.

Since she has been hearing/talking since a young age, I no longer know anything about sign language, (other than cookie). Her disability has affected me very much in my life, it has caused major downs in my attitude and caused me sadness. It has been a big challenge in my family’s lives.

Now, we truly are best friends. I do not know what I will do without her in college, she always comes on Starbucks runs and all kinds of other things.

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This writer can be reached via Twitter: @DawsonTriplitt and via email: Dawson Triplitt.