[rocknation]

Blabbermouth: KISS frontman Paul Stanley, who was born with Level 3 Microtia and is deaf in his right ear, last week visited a four-year-old Canadian girl who was born without external ears and travelled to Los Angeles to have reconstructive surgery...

In his memoir...Face The Music: A Life Exposed, Stanley talks frankly about his early struggles with...a congenital deformity of the cartilage of the outer ear that can affect normal hearing...(He)...grew up half-deaf and scarred with a deformed right ear...(and) eventually had reconstructive surgery in 1982 to create an ear using a piece of his rib cage.

Stanley (was asked) why he kept his ear a secret for so long. "Oh, it was painful," he said... "You can only reveal...and...deal with things when you're ready to. And my experiences as a child were so debilitating and destructive that the best way for me to deal with my ear was to cover it and to — at least on the surface — ignore what was going on; although when something is invisible to others doesn't mean it's not visible and very much a part of your life...

"I've had an implanted hearing aid for years now...This has been an ongoing adjustment for me as my brain has never processed sound coming in from my right side...In the beginning, it was incredibly taxing and extremely confusing...That said, it has settled in quite a bit and I have to say, it has enhanced my day-to-day activities."

A half deaf rock star? Talk about bad for business -- I wonder how long he kept that secret from his bandmates, never mind the record label. And he's lucky that long hair was in vogue at the time. Being in a rock band must have done wonders for his self-esteem, but not knowing how the public would react to the truth must have been terrifying, too. I can certainly understand why he feels happy for that girl.

[dcj28]

So what you're saying is anyone with a disability should know their limits? As he's been in a successful rock band for 40 years now,I don't think it's held him back really,do you? It's all in his book if you want to copy and paste that too.

[rocknation]

Originally Posted by dcj28

So what you're saying is anyone with a disability should know their limits? As he's been in a successful rock band for 40 years now, I don't think it's held him back really,do you?

The issue is knowing perfectly well that limits would likely be placed UPON you by those WITHOUT disabilities if you dared to be more open. Why do you THINK it's taken the better part of 40 years to for Paul to "recover" from so much "pain"?