You heard it here first. Hearing aids are now, by official proclamation, cool. Although losing your hearing is still a drag, hearing aids and other hardware don't have to be. Out of the dresser drawer and into the street!
I have this off-and-on fantasy of getting Tikka the Parrot Princess certified as a "hearing-ear" bird. I know she can do it, because she alerts me to things going on around me all the time (that I don't hear.) Besides, she is fascinated with my hearing aids. Bit the tiny little volume button off one of them a long time ago. While on my shoulder.
She's also computer-literate.
But I don't want to encourage people to get parrots just for that reason. They're VERY high maintenance and, IMHO, we humans should stop breeding them. Too many rescues, too many mistreated, and they live too long, which makes everything that much harder.
Check out this paper on hypersensitive hearing conditions. It explains why we automatically pick out our name from a noisy background, even when we can't distinguish any other speech.
Last week, I was parked at a local gas station, while a mechanic looked at the headlights on my car (both bulbs had blown out within days of each other).I couldn’t help noticing a group of construction workers sawing through the concrete pad where the pumps were, making an amount of noise that was really unbelievable unless you were right there in its midst (in which case it was painful).The worker nearest me did not appear to be wearing any hearing protection.I rummaged around in my car and found a pair of earplugs that I had squirreled away, and walked over to him.I handed him the earplugs, and gestured for him to put them in his ears.He seemed to understand, but walked away with them in hand toward a man in a forklift cab (who was wearing earplugs).
I tried to focus on my headlight repair, and paid the mechanic.By then, all the workers had pulled the hoods on their sweatshirts over their heads, and the noise had stopped.Odd, I thought.So, not being one to shy away from a confrontation, I walked over toward the man in the forklift cab.As I neared him, he shouted, “Ma’am, I have a glove box full of earplugs!That guy you talked to is the only one who won’t wear them!”So, I walked back up to “my” guy, and asked if he was wearing earplugs, and he showed me that he was, under his hood.
As I got into my car, he came over to the edge of the work site (surrounded by tape) and showed me his earplugs again and smiled.I smiled back and showed him my hearing aids, and shrugged.
This past weekend, I'm walking/birdwatching at the Greensprings Trail (red-headed woodpecker, juncos, bluebirds, cowbird, red-winged blackbirds) and I hear this loud, insistent and very clear bird call. I look around, asking myself what it is, and decide it must be a carolina wren. So, I stand there looking for it in my binocs and tweeting back at it. Finally, gave up and decided it must be hiding in the brush. As I neared the parking lot, I heard my cellphone signal to me that I had a message. "But why hadn't I heard the phone ring?" I wondered. I programmed it with a nice, clear, bird-call ringtone. Kind of like.....a carolina wren.... Oh, okay. Duh.
At the neighborhood pool one afternoon, I was reading and huddling in the shade, waiting for "adult swim" to start. Finally, the lifeguard blew the whistle long and loud. People started getting out of the pool, as they always do, and I got out of my deck chair and jumped in off the diving board. When I surfaced, my friend Jill was at the side of the pool, gesturing to me to get out. I soon (but not soon enough) realized that the lifeguard had blown the whistle to get everyone OUT of the pool because of a thunderclap, which I didn't hear. He must've thought I was a recalcitrant scofflaw; jumping into the pool just as he ordered everyone to get out.
T-Coils: Not Just for Telephones Anymore
Most hearing-aid wearers know what the T-Coil, or "telephone setting" is. It's normally a button on the side or a hearing aid, or sometimes an automatic mode that the aid goes into when it's next to a telephone receiver. It picks up the telephone signal and then your hearing aid amplifies it.
Well, T-coils are not just for telephones. When you attend a meeting of the Hearing Loss Association of Williamsburg at the Downtown Library, you can turn on your T-coil and hear everything that is said into the microphone. As a new member of the HLA-W said, "This is the first time in years that I've been in a meeting where I can hear everything!"
And it's not only the Library. Several churches in the area have loop systems. Williamsburg Drug Company has one for facilitating private consultations between the pharmacist and hard-of-hearing customers. Some systems require a neckloop for good reception of the audio signal, others work at the touch of a (T-coil) button.
That's why it's very, very important for people to get hearing aids that have T-coils. Some of the tiny, "open-fit" (no ear mold) aids, and those that fit completely in your ear canal, are too small to accommodate T-coils. Hopefully, miniaturization will fix this problem in the foreseeable future. But in the meantime, make sure you, and others who ask your advice, insist on aids with T-coils!
I was talking with a friend of my son's who knows I'm HI, and I must have gotten that blank stare of I have no idea what you just said, when I "heard" him say "Why don't you have earrings in"? Looking a bit puzzled, I reached for my ears and replied "I don't know, I usually do". Of course he immediately started laughing hysterically and repeated what he said "Why don't you have your hearing aids in"? Chris Reedal
I am from a family with hearing loss. My father has a cochlear implant, my stepmother has hyperacusis, and two of my sisters have hearing aids. We seem to lose our hearing in our mid-30's, and our minds shortly thereafter. Sometimes the order is reversed.
