Coping With My Own Hearing Loss

My name is Deborah, I am 39 years old and I have been married for 21 years. My husband's name is Tim and together we have three children: Heather, 19; Fallon, 16; and Nathaniel, 13.

Two years ago I was diagnosed with a hearing problem. The problem started about 5 years ago, actually, when I was having a hard time hearing what my husband or other men were saying. I noticed the problem when I would be shopping and couldn't understand or hear what a store clerk would say, or when I took the car to the shop and couldn't understand what the mechanic was telling me. The biggest problem I had was hearing my husband. Sometimes I would only hear that he was talking but I couldn't understand what he was telling me. Other times I couldn't hear that he had said anything at all. I told him to stop mumbling and to speak up, but this made him angry. He told me that I wasn't listening or paying attention. I told him to look at me when he spoke to me and not to talk to me if he was facing the other direction or walking away from me. He tried, but when you are walking thought the park or through a store in front of someone it is difficult to turn around to speak to someone following you. I didn't always know he was talking to me so often didn't answer, which led to misunderstandings or arguments. Sometimes I would try to guess at what he was saying, but if I guessed wrong, it would lead to more arguments. For instance, after trying on a suit he asked me if it looked too much like one he already had. I said that I liked it but that it was very similar to one he already had. He huffed and said that a yes or no answer would have been fine. Confused, I walked away to look at something else because I didn't know why he was upset with me. Later he told me that I had done that to him about 5 times already that day and he thought I was trying to make fun of something he had said. One day he was telling me something serious but I started to laugh because what he had said sounded very funny to me. He got mad and told me that it was useless to talk to me because I never paid attention and I tried to make a big joke out of everything. That hurt, and even though I tried to explain, he was upset and refused to try to tell me what he was talking about again. The next day I received a postcard in the mail for a new Beltone Hearing Center that was opening near us, so I called and made an appointment for a free hearing test. When I told Tim he said that it was probably HIS fault, that he must mumble and not speak loud enough. The morning of the appointment he told me that everything would be fine and that he was the only reason I couldn't hear anything. He said he would try to talk louder and more clearly so I could hear him, but that there was nothing wrong with me. I wanted to believe that. I wanted to be told that he was just not speaking up, or that he was speaking into the wind and his voice was being carried in another direction. I wanted to be told anything but what I was soon to find out.

I went into the office expecting everything to be fine. The card said that the hearing test would take just 10 minutes. Once I was called back, there was an external ear examination, then the visual internal ear examination with the scope. Everything appeared to be fine. The doctor told me there was no evidence of any ear trauma, scarring, or damage of any kind. Then he adjusted the head set and the hearing test began. "Raise a finger each time you hear a sound. Raise a finger on the left hand if you hear it in the left ear and a finger on the right hand if you hear it in the right ear." So he started fidgeting with the equipment...a while later I heard a sound so I raised a finger. He marked a box on his chart and continued. After a few moments he took the head set off and told me he wanted to do another test. This time he put a different kind of a head set on me where the earphone part rested on the bone behind and below the ear. Again he told me to raise a finger on the side where I heard a sound. When this test was finished, he did the first test again. Next he did a test where he had me listen to words and repeat them. Some of them I understood and others of them I did not understand. Some of the words were spoken by a woman and other words were spoken by a man. After this test he told me that he was going to turn the volume up gradually and I should tell him when it was at a comfortable level if it was something I was going to listen to for any amount of time, such as a radio or a television program. He turned up the volume and watched for me to tell him it was loud enough. He continued to turn the know. Finally I told him it was at a comfortable level. Then he said he was going to continue turning up the volume and I should tell him when it became uncomfortable. He kept on turning the knob very slowly and it finally reached an uncomfortable level.

He removed the head set and tapped his pen on the desk for a moment. We went over a whole page of medical conditions and did a family medical history. He asked when I had last been tested for high blood pressure, diabetes, etc. Finally he told me that the test showed that I was in the early stages of hearing loss, but that it was exhibiting a rare pattern. Instead of losing the high tones first, I was losing the low tones. That meant that when a man spoke, I had a harder time hearing and understanding than when a woman or a child spoke. We talked more about family history. No one in the recent history of my family has had a hearing problem, but the symptoms of my hearing loss pointed towards a congenital problem that manifested itself in adulthood rather than in childhood or later adult years. He said that it was also a more common pattern for diabetes-related hearing loss. Just two months prior to my visit, however, I had had a physical examination and a whole series of blood tests, where no diabetes-related problems had been diagnosed.

We talked for a moment about hearing aids and, at that time, he said that the hearing loss was minimal but would most likely progress. He said he would call around to some others that he knew to see if he could get all of the parts that would be needed to make a very simple set of hearing aids with minimal amplification abilities so that we could see if that would help. He said it might take as long as 6 months to come up with all of the parts second-hand to keep the price low.

Two hours after I had gone in for a ten-minute hearing test, I left with tears in my eyes. So many emotions were running through me and all I wanted to do was get home and listen to my family talking to me as much as I could because I was worried that one day I might wake up and not be able to hear them again!

(This entry is not finished. It will be continued soon!)