I only wear one hearing aid and that’s because my other ear has no speech discrimination.  So without the aid, I hear very little. During the course of the first hour, I realized and I mean, fully became aware of how much I actually did not hear and though my colleagues knew I took off my hearing aid, initially, no one appeared to communicate any differently with me, knowing, I could not hear.  That’s when it hit me.  Hearing people have no understanding of what it means to “not hear.” They have no idea that I am watching their lips move and nothing they are saying is being heard or understood.

I admit to being a very poor lip reader but I do read people well. I can see the build up of their frustration in  “my” not hearing them. I can see their blood pressure rising as the coloring in their faces change and their mouths fly wide open, thinking, she’ll hear me if I just scream a bit louder, open my mouth a bit wider.  I want to yell STOP this madness.  Stop, listen, learn.  No matter how many times I tell these people, yelling does not make me “understand” the words being said, I continue to feel misunderstood or is it my hearing loss thats misunderstood.  NO, it’s just hearing loss that is not understood.  I refuse to take the blame for “their” frustration.

I put my hearing aid back into my ear and the world is turned back on.

The SayWhatClub convention is going to be held here in Salt Lake, August 15 – 18. Utah-CAN asked to make sure the box office knew we would be interested in more captioned performances. Hmmm.

“I have a group of hard of hearing people coming to town for a convention this summer. What are the chances of getting Wicked captioned at that time?”

She excused herself to ask her manager and came back to me with ASL interpreted dates. She/they really thought this would work for us. Disappointment settled in. They don’t get it yet.

“That won’t work for us,” I told her. “We grew up hearing and speaking with many of us losing our hearing later in life. Most of us don’t know sign language and never will. We need captions because we still sort of belong to the hearing world.”

She excused herself again and came back more apologetic this time. She handed me a card for Broadway Across America and told me to get in touch with them.

I walked away thinking I would contact the company. I also know Utah-CAN will probably be working for more captioned plays too. What really bugged me was how we are lumped into the Deaf, not that I have a problem with the Deaf, but our communication needs are so different. We hear of Deaf Culture… maybe it was time to come out, OUT LOUD, with hard of hearing culture. I’m not sure how to go about doing that but I will be thinking on it.

So I go to the play knowing nothing about South Pacific. As we wait for the doors to open, I walk by the souvenir booth and I see a shirt that says, “I’m going to wash that man right out of my hair” and I start laughing. I know that part of the play! There’s this other goofy favorite movie of mine called Welcome to Woop Woop and they spoof that scene so I do know something of South Pacific.

The doors open and we take our seats. I spot the captioning to the left of the stage in red lettering. Relief fills me and more excitement bubbles up. I see a number of people from our hard of hearing community and I’m giddy. Then the seats start filling in and I realize the captions aren’t high enough. Two young girls with big hair are sitting in front of us, tall girls. I look over to the side and watch as a lady from the Sanderson Center advocated with the theater staff for two little ladies who couldn’t see the captions through all the heads. They brought the women seat cushions to boost them up and they settled in. Maybe I could have used one too.

I look at the girl of me and think, if she stays scrunched down in her seat, I’m ok. She doesn’t. I ask my boyfriend to change seats with me but I still don’t have a clear view of the captions. I sit up straight and the girl in front of me sits up straight. I lean to the side and it’s not long until she leans to the side. Finally I lean over my knees and rest my head on my arm to watch the captions and play. Would you believe the girl in front of me did the same thing? It was crazy enough I had to laugh a little. I leaned back when she leaned forward and still watched the play and captions. Back and forth we went for almost 3 hours.

In spite of that frustration, I enjoyed the play.  I have now seen South Pacific. The captions were right on and my delay in laughing was just a second or so behind everyone else. Even with the difficulties in seeing the captions, I enjoyed the play and I’m glad I went. I would go again but I would make the suggestion that the captions be higher up in the air. Or maybe I should insist on sitting closer. The play was totally different entertainment for me and hopefully the visible captions spread a little hearing loss awareness.

One the way out, I saw our CART person (not working that day) and she asked me how it went. I told her it was great except they weren’t high enough. She nodded. I bet it’s better next time because I wasn’t the only one wishing I was taller.

Searching further I ran across the SayWhatClub website. It was an internet based community and I joined right away. I don’t need to tell you all how much I learned and the new friends I made because you probably already know. I learned everything I know about hearing loss here from others like myself. It was a godsend.

In July of 1998, the SWC held their second mini-convention, a group camp site in Rocky Mountain National Park. I lived in Blythe, California, and on the way to Colorado, I picked up SWC member Joannie, also from the Connect list, in Vegas. We packed my green Mercury Sable full of camp gear and food and hit the road. It was our first face to face meeting though we were friends on the list. Talking in the car wasn’t easy but we still had fun traveling together.

A day later, I met twenty something other SWC members from various lists and we had a great time. Everyone heard and made sure the others heard. From time to time I heard someone call out, “Hey! You’re faking it!” because there was getting away with it in this group. Throughout the whole weekend, no one felt left out of conversation to my knowledge, even at night around the campfire. Someone brought a guitar, we sang (off key I’m guessing), we shared stories and there was a lot of laughter. The experience of being with others like me touched my heart.

Here’s a few pictures I took of other members. I think I was so happy to be socializing that I didn’t take many pictures, darn it. I wish I had taken a group photo.

Me, almost fourteen years ago

Melanie, Deb and Ling

Karen and her family, Melanie

Paula, Raj, Bob and Christine

Bob, Walt, Raj, Brenda and Christine

Without the SWC, I don’t know where I would be today. I haven’t been to another convention since that first one and how I wanted to go the last couple of years but money and time prevented it. In 2012 it’s going to be held in Salt Lake City and I’m on the committee so I get to attend! Yea! I’m excited to meet more SWCer’s and I just know it will be another event I will remember forever.

Not only do I get to attend but I get to help plan it. We are still working on things but here’s a sneak preview of what’s to come.

We have John Waldo coming to speak. For those of you who don’t know him, he’s an attorney (hard of hearing himself) from Washington who advocates for equal access for the deaf and hard of hearing. He fought for captioning in theaters and some of us are now seeing those results. He’s done this and so much more. Visit his website for latest information on access and advocacy issues, Wash-CAP.

He came to Utah about a year ago to give our Popcorn Coalition, now Utah-CAN, a pep talk on getting equal access in public places and I had the pleasure of seeing him speak. One of the things he stated was how we hard of hearing folk seem to be the meekest of the handicap groups. We are hesitant to make our needs known, not wanting bother others with our requests but you don’t see that with people in wheelchairs… they aren’t afraid to ask for equal access and are much more vocal about it. That got me thinking and gave me courage to attend a couple of events that I would have otherwise shied away from, with success. It’s ok for me to ask for my rights and most of the time people are willing to work with me. If I’m not going to ask, who will? I’m excited to have John Waldo attending our convention and eager to hear him speak again. Come to the convention, listen to him speak and see what inspiration he offers you.

There’s going to be a fun workshop called Happiness 101 with Frank Clayton who is a licensed counselor in Utah. Come learn about what happiness is and is not, the myths of happiness and the happiness set point. Learn why you’re not happier, but most importantly come to learn what will make you lastingly happier based on scientific research. Visit his website, Happiness 101.

When I moved to Salt Lake City, I discovered the Sanderson Center for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. This place has been a haven to me and it too has a special place in my heart. I went to the Sanderson Center the first time to attend a local HLAA meeting and to my amazement, CART was provided. It my first time experiencing it although I heard of it long before. We hold our Walk4Hearing meetings here and CART is provided. Seminars are offered, with CART (or interpreters) and workshops as well. They provide classes for the hard of hearing as well. There is a level of acceptance here which I only experienced 14 years ago in the Rockies at that first SWC convention.

Donna Penman and Jazzy came last August to visit Salt Lake, to see if it fit the needs for the convention and scout hotel sites. I took them to the Sanderson Center and Donna was amazed at the set up we have here. I believe it’s considered to be one of the best hoh/deaf centers in the country and I feel incredibly lucky to have landed here in Salt Lake City for that reason. The Sanderson Center is eager to help us with the convention and will provide tours of the premises, even sending vans to pick us up. Check it out when you come.

That’s all the news I have for you now but I will update you all as details are settled. Be sure to mark your calendar and join the SWC convention, August 15 – 18, 2012. See you there!

A few weeks ago I went to Maui with my aunt and her grand daughter. After having so much trouble hearing on the plane from Chicago to Salt Lake, I warned my aunt right away about not hearing well at all on planes.

“I’m basically deaf on the plane,” I tell her. “The engines take away all my hearing.”

“You told me before,” she said.

I had? Oh, good. That must have been on my mind for awhile.

We take off in the plane and when we hit the correct altitude, the stewardess came down the isle. I could smell food so I correctly assumed it would be the food cart coming first and not the drink cart. I studied the menu to make sure there would be no other choices I’d have to make with my meal.

The stewardess parked her cart near me and I ordered my food using prediction instead of hearing when she came to me. I did good on that part then she asked me a question that didn’t relate to food. Her mouth moved and I heard nothing, not a single sound except the roar of the engines. I asked for a repeat and her mouth moved again. I still didn’t have a clue. I looked to my aunt for help and she tried repeating it for me. Still nothing.

“I’m sorry,” I told the lady, “I’m deaf and I can’t understand what you are saying.”

She tried one more repeat and I shrugged with a goofy smile.

Clearly, I wasn’t going to get it so she shook her head and I think she said, never mind. (Now how come I know those words so well?) She pushed a button on her credit card machine and handed me a receipt.

Oh!!! Was that all? Did I want a receipt… how silly. What a stupid thing to haggle over. She should have just printed the damn thing and gave it to me to begin with. Ugh! OK, I’ll be nice.

When the drink cart came I went with a soda and when it returned later I kept it simple with water. Another stewardess later came down the isle asking another question. I don’t remember what it was but instead of playing the repeat game, I told her I was deaf so she nodded her head and went onto a mime. Wonderful! I liked her best of the three.

My aunt and me, not long after getting off the plane.

Touring

I went on a couple of tours while on the island and of course all tours come with lectures, bits of information being tossed out and others asking questions I never hear. For the most part I won’t ask others with me to repeat unless it’s something I really want to know because I don’t want to intrude on their experience. I suffer quietly or I get irritated because I want so much to know what’s being said and I can’t or I accept it graciously. I never know which emotion I’ll get until the time comes. Too often I psyche myself up to not hear so I’m not so disappointed when I can’t.

The first tour was a boat ride out toward another island for snorkeling. We were hoping to see a few whales along the way, and we did, and dolphins, we saw them too. On this boat there were multiple speakers. Luckily, they happened to be near enough to me that I could use speech reading to get more out of the lectures than I thought I would. I was pleasantly surprised I could understand a good portion of it. It took a lot of concentration but I did it. We were on the boat for about 5 hours so I did come home from that trip tired and worn out from concentrating so much. I took a nap afterward and still felt tired the rest of the day.

The next tour was a trip around the island, the road to Hana. We, myself and my aunt’s grand daughter, rode with 8 others in a large, airy van with comfortable seats. As we approach the bus I think I will snag a front seat for better hearing and seeing but as we get on I see we are the last to be picked up so it’s the back of the bus babe. Our Hawaiian driver, Joe, had a microphone on and started giving us history right away about the island as we drove to our continental breakfast. I brought my FM system but forgot to ask him if he would wear it when I got on. It’s hit and miss without the FM so I sort of kick myself for that 20 miles. He named monkey pod trees, I heard mesquite trees and banyan. He said one of them (the banyan?) had the ability to lay down when it got tired. A tree getting tired? I wish I had heard more about that.

We arrive at the golf club which hosts the continental breakfast and he tells us to be sure we get on the right bus when we come back because they all look alike. He says the name of the bus and I miss it but I do hear him say it’s on both fenders. Joe tells us to hurry before the other buses come and it’s gets crowded. Then he says something about door and bathrooms and I miss the rest so instead I follow the others, being careful to check the fender of the bus, and they lead me to the breakfast.

The name of the bus, Pa'a Mo'olelo... I never would have understood the name anyway.

I eat only a little and I eat it fast so I can get back to the bus before the others and talk to Joe about my FM system. He readily agrees to wear it. I feel better.

So we get going again and though Joe’s voice comes through richer and louder but I still miss a lot of what he says. If I really focus, I can understand a lot of what he says but this is almost a ten hour tour and I don’t want to wear myself out like I did the day before. Sometimes I focus on him and sometimes I enjoy the lush green scenery. Oh well, I tried and at least I remembered to bring the FM system which did help a little.

He stops at one point while I am enjoying the scenery instead of focusing on his words, and I hear, “wah wah wah pineapple trees, wah wah wah.” It’s almost like listening to the Charlie Brown adults. I look around to see if I can pick out the pineapple trees but there’s so many other trees that I can’t tell. It takes me another 3 hours on a small hike to figure out which ones are the pineapple trees and that’s because I stop to take a picture of some funky little trees and see a pineapple growing on one. Oh, those are pineapple trees and I have been seeing them all along.

The pineapple tree, at last!

That’s how a lot of my tour went but I did enjoy the trip, the scenery, the waterfalls and small hikes that were offered. Probably because I missed things he said about each hike, I found different paths and some new sites. I knew going in I wouldn’t hear much so I wasn’t too worked up about what I missed. The scenery made up for it all anyway.

Back on the Airplane

On the flight home, I plugged into my iPod. If I’m not going to understand any voices, I might as well enjoy my music. This time I get three barely nice stewardesses. I let them know I’m deaf but I follow their eyes to my iPod. They don’t say anything but clearly they don’t believe me. How can tell them the earbuds (evil things that they are) block out the jet engine noise so I can hear my music better than her. I don’t think there’s any possible way to have her talk to me while filtering out jet noise.

So that’s a piece of what vacationing in like with hearing loss.

It’s hard to believe that the year is almost over and the countdown to 2012 has begun. So too is the countdown to the 2012 SayWhatClub convention, to be held at the Red Lion Hotel in downtown Salt Lake City, Utah, from August 15 to 18.

Our convention webpage is now up. You can find it at saywhatclub.com/events/SLC-con/SLC-con.html or go to our home page, saywhatclub.com, and click on “Conventions” at the top of the page.

You’ll find a convention registration form, workshop schedule and hotel registration information, as well as links to many tourist attractions in the Salt Lake City area. Check back later for a detailed workshop schedule.

The early-bird registration fee (checks postmarked by May 15, 2012) is $100 for a SWC member, $175 for a member and spouse and $200 for a non-member and spouse.

You must register separately for the hotel. Nightly room rates are $94 for a single, $99 for a double and $109 for a quad, plus tax. These rates are good for three days prior to the con start and three days after the con ends.

Mark your calendars now. There’s lots of time to save money. SayWhatClub conventions are educational and fun. I always like to emphasize the fun part. This will be my 10th convention. I’m already looking forward to it.

You should be part of the festivities without making yourself uncomfortable or feeling your making others uncomfortable.  Our only responsibility is to make ourselves comfortable and everything around us accessible.  Your loved ones want to be heard and you want to hear them.  Clearly, you have more than enough time to put things in place.

I recently found out that Oticon has what’s called a partner microphone aka: connect line microphone. I have the streamline link already and I am going to my audiologist to try out the microphone.  It allows me to have a conversation one on one in a party or family situation or even a counseling session much more easily or freer.  Here’s the link. http://bit.ly/tt4SSU

I realize not everyone can afford these items but there are other options as well.  Bringing paper and pen is an option we all have used at one time or another.  Educating everyone around us, letting them know what we need to hear the conversation and be part of the exchange of information.  I know I want to feel part of the holiday season and I don’t want any reader feeling left out as well.  So, how about sharing your thoughts and your ideas on how other hearing impaired and deaf individuals can make it through their holiday season without feeling left out.

Out of curiosity I googled listening skills to see if I could validate the hard of hearing as good listeners. How close is it to the way we communicate? I came across the Mind Tools web page and we are right on the money. Check it out their first recommendation…

pay attention

• Look at the speaker directly.
• Put aside distracting thoughts.
• Listen to the speaker’s body language
• Refrain from side conversations when listening in a group setting.

Our deaf/hard of hearing center had a seminar last week on Alzheimer’s and Hearing Loss. Michael Bower flew in from the Seattle area and presented the above subject and also gave us a short class on non-verbal communication (body language). She told us the 3 main parts of communication are the words we say, the tone we use while saying the words and the way we look while talking. The words we use in communication weigh in at about 7%. The tone while saying those words rates 38% and the way we look while talking speaks volumes at 55%. She was trying to tell us how words don’t matter so much but someone mentioned how much harder communication is without that 7% of words. She gave us that one (her husband is hard of hearing). So body language is appears to be important to hearing people on the communication level. They probably just don’t use it as much as we do.

Next Mind Tools tells us to show that we are listening:

• Nod occasionally.
• Smile and use other facial expressions.
• Note your posture and make sure it’s open and inviting.
• Encourage the speaker to continue with small verbal comments like yes and uh-huh.

Did anyone else smile while reading this? I did. This could be instructions for “How to Bluff.” This is exactly how we fake our way through an entire conversation. It works because people keep talking to us until we mess up and respond inappropriately, then we have to back pedal. (I don’t bluff much anymore. It cheats everyone out of time.) I think I do all the above even when I’m understanding what’s being said which is why it comes so naturally for bluffing.

The next step for active listening is, provide feedback, summarize the conversation at some point to be sure you’re understanding the other person correctly. I do this but it goes something like this, “What? You’re going to pick your seat?” Then I found out the person was “going to get his keys.”

Step four is to not interrupt the speaker. Being hard of hearing, I have to interrupt now and then to find out where we are. “Wait-wait-wait! You went way too fast for me. Please start again only slower.” And the last step is to respond appropriately. We try to, it just doesn’t always work.

Even though I mess up on a few of these of suggestions, I am good as a listener. After all I know a lot of hearing people out there with bad listening skills. My boyfriend with his ADD is one of them. His thoughts come rapidly, tumbling over one another and non-stop. He interrupts me with totally off topic questions or statements or instead of listening to me, he’s listening to the people behind us in a line or at another table. It’s annoying. I tell people I have a hearing problem and he has a listening problem. And he’s not the only hearing person I know that does this.

For further reading on body language, 3 Key Elements

Assistive Listening Device symbol

I used to be an avid movie buff. I went to the theater once a week at least, and there were times when I knew almost every movie up for an Academy Award. I waited at midnight in a line to see Star Wars Episode 1. My heart broke watching The Horse Whisperer. I watched The Titanic 7 times in the theater going by myself half the time. I laughed with Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets and Al Pacino played a fun devil in Devil’s Advocate. The Fifth Element rocked my world so much I bought the soundtrack. You get the idea.

I watched all these movies from a small town theater in California. Thanks to the SayWhatClub, I knew to look for the ALD symbol (above). When our little town built and opened a theater, I recognized the sign right off.  I asked the ticket person what they had available. They had infra-red headphones, all I had to do was turn over my drivers license while I borrowed them. They were big padded headphones which covered the entire ear, had volume control and since my hearing loss wasn’t that bad yet, I understood about 90% of the movie with them on. It didn’t take long before the ticket people recognized me and had the headphones ready by the time I came up in the line.

Then I moved to a bigger town in Arizona, about 40,000 people and had three theaters. One theater had no ALD’s available. One theater said they had them and gave me a one sided headphone, light weight and the kind that sits just over the ear canal. I held it by two fingers with my face wrinkled up saying, “This is it?” I tried them out because it was all they had and I still wanted my movies. They didn’t work at all. The third theater had the same kind of headphone and I told them no thanks.

Without good earphones, my comprehension of dialogue in movies fell to somewhere around 60%. I struggled along with movies for about 6 months and the frustration of missing the key words, the punch line and so on, I stopped going. I waited for movies to come out on video so I would have captions. Within a year, I was out of the loop with movies. It wasn’t the same as watching them on the big screen. Over the next 8 years, I didn’t even know the actors anymore. I haven’t watched the Academy Awards since the late 90′s.

When I moved to Salt Lake City three years ago, I found out we had a theater with rear-view captioning. Excited at the possibility of movies in my life again, I went. The first movie I saw there, Avatar (not in 3-D), had me happy I lived in a big city. I kept an eye on their captioned movies and it didn’t long to figure out they rarely played first run or popular movies. In a theater of about 20 screen rooms, only one had rear-view captioning. Most of what they showed there were the movies that were bombing or children movies. I lost interest.

Recently the CaptiView grabbed my attention when our deaf and hard of hearing center had a festival in September. The Utah-CAN had a table with information on the CaptiView and even had one there to show people how it worked. They explained as theaters switched to a digital format, the cup holder device would be available. I vaguely heard about it in the past but seeing it made it more real. I found out the Cinemark theater down the street from me had it at their place. I couldn’t wait to try it out.

My first visit there I asked the ticket lady which movies were in digital format. She said they wall were. I stood there and looked over the list of movies playing, thrilled to have a choice again. My hard of hearing friend and I picked “The Big Year.” There were no captions during the previews but as soon as the movie started up, our CaptiViews lit up and started showing the dialogue. We let out little squeals of delight, clapped our hands quietly and then watched the movie. It was sensational!

CaptiView in the theater.

It worked so well the first time, I went back and tried watching The Rum Diary on it’s opening weekend. Nothing, no captions except to say that it was ready. I went out to inform the people in the ticket office. They sent a manager to me who said to wait there and she would be right back. I paced the hallway for 10 minutes with my CaptiView in hand when another manager giving an interview at one end of the hallway came to me and asked me what the problem was and I told him too. He said he would be right back. I paced the hallway for another 10 minutes when I saw captions light up. I missed twenty minutes but figured I could catch up.

Not. It was the wrong captions and didn’t match the movie. Maybe the device searched automatically after so much time until it found captions? Near tears with frustration, my boyfriend and I left the theater room. A guy standing just outside the doors handed me two free passes and they gave me my money back. It sort of made up for the sheer irritation of it all but I would have rather have seen the movie with captions.

Yesterday I went back again, with my free passes, to see the movie, Tower Heist. Surely, it would work all right since it wasn’t a brand new movie. We sat there I waited with tension through the previews. The movie started and nothing again! Damn it! I went out right away to inform management. They said they would be right back, har har. I paced a different hallway for 5 minutes checking my CaptiView every minute and nothing. I resumed pacing and the manager snuck up behind me and tapped my shoulder making me jump. She said, “It shows it working fine up there.” I looked at mine and it was displaying the captions now. I let her know I was tired of missing the beginning of movies and she patted my shoulder as I went into the theater again. The must have pushed the reset button I read about in another review of the device.

My boyfriend told me I didn’t miss much as I sat down adjusted the captions to my liking. I was not in the best frame of mind but eventually I settled in and started to laughing with rest of the people in there. Alan Alda makes a great bad guy.

I like the idea of having movies back but it’s not without irritation. How many more movies will I miss the beginning to in this process? From now on I will go earlier (my boyfriend is contantly late) and ask them as soon as I buy my ticket to please push the button before hand. Maybe the more they see me, the better they will get at the process. As I walk in they will think, “Oh no, here she comes again,” but after awhile it should all fall into routine and maybe they will like my patronage.

All Cinemarks are switching to digital format (I believe) and will have CaptiViews available. Other theater companies will follow so I encourage you all to go forth and watch a movie. Go to the theater, inquire and let’s make our presence known. John Waldo has done a lot of advocating for us so don’t let these new opportunities go by, claim them. I’m going to be a thorn in their side until they get it right.

The immediate feeling when people say, never mind, is hurt because it dismisses us from further communication. It leaves us out of the loop and feeling even more isolated than we already do. Daily, we let many words go by without hearing or understanding, we pick and choose when to ask for repeats so we’re not such a bother. Then when we ask a repeat and get slammed with those words, it goes straight to the heart.

These past few months, I attended a speech reading class. There were three ladies who hadn’t been around others with hearing loss. They were just seeking help after years of doing it alone. At the beginning or end of each class, the topic changed to coping strategies or cochlear implants. One night, one of the girls asked how to handle someone saying, “Never mind.” She went to a church service and someone who usually helped her said those words. Our teacher suggested taking her friend aside and telling her how it hurt and asking her if she would rather find someone else to help.

Then they asked how I dealt with it. First comes the hurt but hot on the heels of that comes anger. I hit the roof. People don’t normally tell me “never mind” twice because in a rant, I let them know I do the best I can and it’s not my fault I have a hearing loss. I didn’t ask for it, I want to be included.  I don’t care how silly the statement was but I insist on knowing what was said…   And sometimes it was silly and nothing I needed to know but at least I was granted the same rights as hearing people. Anger may not be the best way to handle the situation but it comes automatically for me. My friends advice in class about taking that someone aside to talk it out is a better idea and maybe I will remind myself that next time.

My boyfriend was on the receiving end of “never mind” once. He never used it again. One day, while I was at my desk answering an email, he came in and babbled something. I didn’t want to lose my focus on writing so I nodded my head, also known as the deaf nod. He freaked out and hit the roof. “You tuned me out,” he said angrily. “That’s not right and it probably feels just like someone telling you never mind,” and he stormed out of my office. I sat there thunderstruck. The deaf nod equals never mind? It blew me away. Knowing how never mind felt, I took more responsibility listening to others.

To be fair, he should have waited until he had my full attention before starting to talk because even a hearing person can get caught up in a task and tune people out. Still, the whole scene left an impression on me and the wheels started to turn. Is the deaf nod a dismissal of sorts? Even though we are trying not to bother someone (or ourselves at times), the fake out message may come across as if we don’t care enough about them to hear what they have to say. Faking it, for the first time, had a slightly evil feel to it and because of that, I became more aware.

Before that, I hadn’t thought to put the deaf nod into the same category as never mind. What do you think? How do you deal with never mind?

So last night was the reading and I received positive response from the audience.  I shared it on the Connect list and now I’ll share it here on the SWC blog.  Here it is…

Hearing Aids 101

 a la Chelle George

Hearing aids aren’t called hearing miracles for a reason. Hearing aids help but they can’t reproduce true hearing. Technology is making advances but there is no cure for hearing loss. Those of us who wear hearing aids learn their limits but some hearing people around us seem to think once we pop our hearing aids in, we will understand everything. I’m here to tell you, even with our aids in we are still hard of hearing.

Sensorineural hearing loss, also called nerve deafness, is the most common type of hearing loss and it is permanent. With this kind of loss, some sounds come across at normal volume and others not all. Usually it’s low tones heard best with the higher frequencies missing. High pitches includes birds, bugs, timers, phones, kids and many women’s voices. In the alphabet many consonants are higher frequencies and vowels come across in low tones. Out of 26 letters in the alphabet, I hear five of them best; even with my hearing aids in.

Imagine going through your day hearing mostly vowels and only some consonants clearly. Many conversations are a constant puzzle to piece together. Take the sentence, “I’ve got to get my keys,” and try understanding it this way: I ot et I ee’s. For those with hearing loss, their mind races to fill in the blanks much like Wheel of Fortune with letters blanked out. Life becomes the Wheel of Fortune, only can I buy a consonant, please? The vowels aren’t as important. My hearing aids help me get a few more sounds but I still miss whole words. A busy day of ‘hearing’ can lead to exhaustion with all that concentration and mental activity.

Hearing people seem to think, “If only she would turn up the volume, she could hear.” Here it is in simple terms; volume distorts. Some sounds I hear well and some I do not. Take the word “shout” and try shouting it out. The “OW” hurts my ears coming across loud and clear but the “sh” and “t” are lost in “OW.” Shouting won’t work and neither will hearing aids with a super high volume because technology hasn’t caught up to missing frequencies.

Mechanical hearing pick ups mechanical noises better than sounds I want to hear. I can’t hear my phone ring, my cat meow, birds sing and I have trouble understanding speech but I do hear the garbage truck grind to a halt in front of my house, the banging of the garbage bin as it’s tipped over and set back down. In cars, I hear road noise better than the person sitting next to me. In restaurants I hear fans, refrigerators and soda machines, not to mention the clashing of plates and clattering of silverware far better than the person sitting across from me trying to have a conversation. This also applies to large gatherings. All I hear is the roar of the crowd which drowns out the person in front of me trying to talk.

Technology has come a long way and digital hearing aids have helped in that these noises don’t hurt my ears as much as they used to but I still can’t hear whispers, understand the television without captions nor lyrics in songs and I can’t understand what someone says from another room, even with my hearing aids in. Listening to people takes mega amounts of concentration. I use some lip reading, watch body language and facial expressions for clues and sometimes I still get stuck on a word or a whole sentence, even with the help of my hearing aids.

I don’t leave the house without my hearing aids because without them I am more lost and every little bit helps. The old analog hearing aids were much harder to wear all the time because they turned up all the noise, including those I already heard well. The newer digital ones suppress some sounds and then try to take sounds I can’t hear and turn them into sounds I can but even that program has it’s limits.

Eye glasses slip on and replace vision but hearing aids can’t do that. They help but they do not give me my hearing back. All the adjustments in the world will not replace true hearing. Please know I am tormented at my own failure to understand my native tongue, simple English. I come down hard enough on myself without others getting impatient with me. Once sounds are gone, they are gone and there is no magical cure.

*Note: Cochlear implants run along the same lines. They may hear more sounds than a hearing aid but The CI does not replicate true hearing either.  Cochlear implant people are hard of hearing, even with their CI on.