Silence is Golden, But Not When It's Unwanted
Today I walked into a center where they sell hearing aids. I filled out the application and gave them the hearing test from the ENT, which was all Greek to me. I sat down and the first thing the guy said was, “I have to know your story. We normally don’t see people with this kind of hearing loss at such a young age.”
Most people don’t know I have a hearing deficiency. If you call out my name and I don’t turn, don’t think I’m being rude. Just wave your arms, that’ll catch my attention. Sure, I can hear, not totally deaf. My husband didn’t believe for the longest time that I have a hearing problem. I guess he thinks I’m just ignoring him. Well, I’ll let you in on a secret, not being able to hear well does help to ignore certain irritants. Lol But mostly, it’s exhausting.
We don’t go to movies any more, which given the cost of tickets and popcorn, it’s not a big loss. When the movies were affordable, I would have to take a Tylenol before the show, so I wouldn’t walk out of the theater with a horrible headache. There was so much movement it was difficult to see the words, I mean.. I use my vision to Hear.
My mom explained that when I was a young child, I had an incredibly high temperature. They took me to the hospital and the doctor later told my mom that if they had waited any longer to bring me in, my parents would have taken me home in a coffin. From what I gather, the high temperature burnt the nerves in my ears. The guy at the hearing center told me that based on the hearing test results, my hearing issues are in the inner ear, which makes sense because there are inner hair cells inside the ear... those were damaged, in both ears.
Being a teacher, my mom worked with me on how to pronounce words. I keep my vocabulary simple, not because I don’t know the big words.. just don’t know how to properly pronounce them. When I was in second grade, I remember Ms. Spanola pulling me out of the class when the kids were making fun of me. She said, “It’s not funny! This is serious!” She brought me into an empty room next door and worked with me on how w’s sound different than r’s. I still have that problem. I don’t hear much of a difference, but I know how the two different letters feel different in my mouth. Weird, right?
My mom didn’t want me to have the negative connotation of speech therapy (back then kids made fun of you if you went to speech therapy), so she would work with me a lot at home. I think that’s why people ask me, “Are you from around here? You don’t sound like a Southerner.” Whatever that sounds like...
I know I don’t hear most words or sometimes only bits of words. I can remember my mom calling out to me and I made out the word “Cloths” and I saw her in the laundry room.. so I figured it out that she was asking me to bring my dirty cloths to the laundry room. I only heard that one word from the sentence, but as a kid, I could understand what she wanted. That’s my world. It’s very quiet.
Until 2009 I didn’t know how much I was missing. My parents bought me hearing aides. I had two weeks to determine if I would keep them or return them. I cried the first time I had them on, because I could HEAR! I could hear people walking, I could understand the words on the radio! After one week, I turned them back in. I had migraines. I had to take out the hearing aides, turn off the lights and have the house silent. The world is noisy. Things that you normally filter out, I was hearing at a scary level. Did you know that when a cat jumps on the window sill that the blinds move and make a noise? I didn’t and I was walking around the house trying to figure out what in the heck that sound was!
I shared my story with the guy today. He said, "What you're telling me make a lot of sense." He pulled out the chart and explained how the hearing loss gets measured from deep tones to higher tones. The deeper tones are, for example, male voices and vowels. The higher tones are female voice and consonants. This is the reason I can’t make out the difference between “sat, cat, fat” all I hear is “at.” When you hear the words “see, be, ski,” all I hear is the letter e. I piece sounds together to get the sentence.. and sometimes I get really weird sentences. If I have a funny face and asked you, “What did you just say?” it’s because I heard something bizarre while trying to puzzle the sound together.
My hearing loss for the deeper sounds is 25%, which is considered a loss, but mild. My hearing loss for the higher tones is 70%. The chart says that on average between those two losses I hear only 40 percent of what a normal person hears. He said, “So, you can hear that people are talking, but you can’t make out the words, which is the clarity of the sound.” I asked him if he would repeat what he shared with me, so I could do a video of the explanation. (Hope to attach it to the blog post). What he said made so much sense... because most of the time I hear people talking like Charlie Brown’s cartoon teacher.
He told me that there’s nothing out there for only increasing the volume of a person speaking and decrease the other sounds. When I get my hearing aides, I’ll adjust to the deeper sounds easier, because it’s going to be fitted for my needs and will only increase the deeper sounds by 25 percent.... but the higher tones, a whooping 70% increase, including all sounds. He told me not to wear my hearing aids in a crowd, family gathering or restaurant until I had acclimated to the new sounds.
“It’s easier for someone who had normal hearing to adjust to hearing aids from a hearing loss due to old age. Because they already know how loud the world is. It will be more difficult for you, because you don’t know how to filter the sounds. When you first get the hearing aids, wear them at home for four hours at a time. But we need to get you to the 14 hours a day of wearing them.”
Then he shared something even more interesting... people with significant hearing loss at a young age, without getting it corrected... do not get the same brain stimulation that a normal hearing person gets. If not corrected, this can lead to a higher risk of Alzheimer’s or Dementia. More inspiration to make this work.
It was an educational conversion. It helped me to understand that there are reasons for my hearing and exactly where the problems are... and oh man, did it feel good to talk with someone who REALLY understands! He told me about a couple that came in. The man had the hearing loss and the wife kept saying, “Do you know how annoying it is to constantly have to repeat things to him!” He looked at the woman and replied, “Do you know how frustrating his life is without being to hear on a normal level 24/7!” He told me that I learned how to read lips and piece together words and I have to do this on a constant basis... that it must be exhausting. Yes, it is. Frustrating and exhausting, but you do what you have to do..
And now, we are buying hearing aids. With the discount from the insurance company and coverage, the 9,000 hearing aids will cost us 3,100. I go to get fitted on July 10th. I’m excited to try again. Technology has advanced. I’ll be able to use my phone to adjust the volume. I’ll have an app for the hearing aid! But I’m nervous too. I hope not to have any migraines. I know it threw off my sense of balance too when I tried them in the past. How will my world open up... I went to this particular center because my husband's brother in law spoke highly of them and said that the quality of life has increased dramatically for him. I'm hoping for the same results.
On a side note, I think it's a real credit to my mom that I was able to do so well in school and manage life with the hearing loss that I have. My mom is legally blind (even with telescopic lenses she can't see the "E" on the eye chart) and yet, she was given a hearing impaired child to raise. She used to tell me that she couldn't tell who was sitting next to her until they spoke... but that she could know who the person was when they walked into the room by the way they walked into the room, from the sound of their footsteps. I remember thinking how odd that was, because I could never hear anyone walking! Our ability to communicate must have been a trial for my mom, but then... this was the reason she was such an incredible teacher... she knew how to adjust teaching for those who needed a different way to learn
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