I Got Surgery to Restore My Hearing. I Regret It.

For decades, tiny, benign tumors on my auditory nerve slowly destroyed my hearing. By the time they were removed—using a “Gamma Knife” that crisscrosses two beams of gamma rays across the tumor—my hearing, even with top-of-the-line Starkey hearing aids, was down to 6 percent in each ear.

After the operation to take out the auditory tumors as well as one that threatened my optic nerve, I did something that until recently would have been seen as life-transforming for a person going deaf: I got cochlear implants.

I may turn out to be one of the last.