I have bad news. My brother, Chance, is partly deaf. We just found out today. He went to the ear doctor because he has been having problems hearing and he has 35% hearing loss in one ear and more than that in the other, but they aren’t sure how much right now. So maybe half of his hearing is gone. We were led to believe, by other doctors, that it was just a buildup of wax the last few weeks because he has a ton of it, and my mom has been doing these routine ear cleaning sessions with this weird ear kit. He goes into surgery to put tubes in his ears next Friday to try to open up his ears. If that doesn’t do the job (which they think it may not) they are going to make him some hearing aides. It is like the saddest thing because when i think back on it I remember all of those times were I would go into his room because he’d have the T.V. blaring, and i’d turn it down and yell at him to keep it down because it was so loud. And he would say “I can’t hear it” and I’d say “yes you can”. I thought it was just the typical thing all kids do to drown out other sounds. But it turns out he really can’t hear it. The teachers have noticed lately, his coaches have noticed. I’ve noticed, my parents have noticed, but we didn’t think it was he was going deaf. We just thought he had too much wax. Everyone feels really bad for not picking up on it sooner. I really hope everything turns out okay. He is only 6 years old.