My mom came for a visit for a few days. It was… frustrating.
She always protected her hearing throughout her life. She’d fuss at me for having my music too loud. She wouldn’t let me use headphones as a teenager. I still “wisely” avoid headphones and earbuds. She never attended a loud concert in her entire life. But, at 76 she began quickly losing her hearing. It was quite the battle to convince her to get hearing aids.
Hearing aids haven’t changed much in 25 years. All of my Grandmother’s complaints back then are now voiced by my mom.
They squeal
Makes her ear sore
batteries constantly require changing
they break easily
seniors just hate the damn things
No surprise that my mom doesn’t wear hers around the house. Just like Grandma refused all those years ago. You never know if she’s wearing it until you try to start a conversation and it’s huh? huh? huh?
The worst of it is we’re being robbed of such precious time together. She’s still very sharp and quick minded at 82. But any real conversations are difficult. We used to talk about events in the news and politics. Now I’m lucky if she understands 25% of any conversation. Even with the hearing aids I suspect she’s guessing at a few words. She’s long overdue for a checkup and new hearing aids but she’s not interested.
Yes, she’s been back and forth to the audiologist. Sometimes they get the hearing aids fitting better and she’s more content wearing them. But that never lasts.
I’ve read hearing loss in the elderly can lead to the quicker onset of dementia. They’ve theorized being cut off from meaningful and thought provoking discussions means they just aren’t engaged mentally. Thankfully, my mom is an avid, lifetime reader and she loves her kindle. She goes through 2 or 3 books a week. Which is very,very good for her cognitive skills.
I guess it’s just an age thing. My dad had 70% hearing loss from working on the flight line in the air force. He started wearing hearing aids in his forties and always wore them. He’d raise hell with the VA’s audiologist and keep them fitting correctly. He’d insist on new ones when needed. If they hurt his ear the audiologist was told about it. Dad made sure he had adequate hearing in his fifties, sixties, and seventies.
People up in their late seventies just don’t seem to adjust as well. They don’t want to put the effort into maintaining a hearing aid.
I’ve been told my maternal great=grandmother was deaf when she died. Three generations. I know what my future holds.
Both my parents are retired and have been for going on 10 years. My dad has hearing loss. No-one is quite sure how much because he refuses to go get tested by a specialist. My mom complains that he doesn’t hear when she talks to him. I told her that over the 50 plus years of marriage, he’s heard everything she has to say, at least twice. So he’s not missing much with all the peace and quiet. She hit me with a wooden spoon.
I feel your pain. My father was the same way about refusing hearing aids. My vocal cords are still damaged from having to speak so loudly as a young adult. Now my spouse is the same way and won’t even go in for an exam.
It makes me so very tired.
One major drawback, at least for my aged mother is the cost! The cheapest one we could find was $3500. She doesn’t have that kind of money, and refuses to allow anyone else in the family (like me, for instance) to pay for it.
Medicare does not cover them. She has good health insurance as a surviving spouse of an American auto worker, but it also excludes hearing aids.
So I must listen to a tv turned up to its highest volume when I visit her. I feel like we don’t converse; we shout.
My dad has substantial hearing loss. He’ll tell you it’s from his stint as a Navy pilot in the late 50’s when he flew multi-engine prop planes on transcontinental flights - but I’m pretty sure it’s got much more to do with the intervening decades of using power tools (table saws, wood routers, lawn mowers, chain saws, etc.) without any hearing protection. Now at 80, he has to listen to the TV at a volume that makes it unpleasant for others to be in the room, and the dynamics of conversation are weird. It’s easy enough to speak in a loud clear voice for him, but when you’re speaking to someone else at a normal volume, he can’t overhear very well and so it’s difficult for him to function as a third party in a casual bull session; mostly he just sits there minding his own business while you have this quiet conversation with someone else. The subtle dialog often seen in movies goes uncomprehended, and he tends to lose the plot; basically if we all decide to watch a movie, he’s just along for the ride. If we go out as a group to a restaurant for dinner, the ambient noise makes it difficult for him to hear anyone who isn’t just about shouting, so he doesn’t participate in conversation much.
A few years ago our collective nagging finally convinced him to try hearing aids. Modern DSP technology is pretty impressive and imparts some amazing capabilities to late-model hearing aids, which partially contributed to his mistrust of them (“something that small and that complex can’t possibly be reliable!”). It was nice for the few months that he tried them, but he didn’t like them. He also has Parkinsons disease, so he lacked the dexterity to change the batteries himself and also to put them in his ears himself. Although conversations were now easily audible for him (for the first time ever, he actually noticed and commented on my brother noisily chewing with his mouth open), he felt that other sounds with a lot of high-frequency noise (e.g. a flushing toilet, or a running faucet) sounded unpleasantly harsh.
Bottom line, he doesn’t wear them anymore. His situation is not as bad as some - he can still carry on a conversation with you if the room is fairly quiet, or if you raise your voice a bit - but it could be so much better.
This thread makes me very happy that my 82-year-old father is one of those people who makes sure he has the latest and greatest hearing aids to meet his needs, and is diligent about getting them adjusted, maintaining them, and keeping the batteries in order. (Also that he has the resources to afford them.)
There was a period when his hearing had deteriorated and he didn’t have good aids, and it was very frustrating to try to talk with him. Now he hears (almost) everything, and it’s possible to have deep, layered conversations with him. It’s frustrating to think that sometimes when we think an older person is losing their mental acuity, it’s really just because they can’t hear well enough to follow the conversation.
I’m hoping my hearing doesn’t get bad enough to require hearing aids. I can’t use in-ear aids because I don’t have that “cup” to hold them. Same reason I can’t use ear buds: they just fall right out. That leaves those clunky things, I guess.
I cannot hear much at all at age 68. But I refuse to twist that damn thing into my ear. I have had problems with my ears becoming infected since the age of 4 or so. I missed a lot of school with pus flowing out of my ears. They have never been right, and will not try shoving something into one or the other or both. I listen to songs I’ve known for years and can no longer discern the words. But at least since my lazic surgery 12 years ago I can see better than I could even as a kid even.
One of the reasons my grandmother didn’t like her hearing aids is that she waited so long to get them that ambient noise bothered her. She was so used to hearing nothing except for when we shouted or she turned the TV way up. With the hearing aids she could hear everything like a normal hearing person can: traffic, random dogs barking, doors opening and shutting. It was driving her crazy (figuratively), so she didn’t use them that often.
Unfortunately not. The nearest one to her would be about 100 miles away. She doesn’t live in one of those demographically desirable parts of the state.
That is a good suggestion, though. It may be worth it to go get her and take her on a a little road trip and use my membership. Thanks!
One thing to check is getting their ears cleaned. Especially of they wear hearing aids, enough wax can accumulate to really blocking their hearing. Most regular doctors can do it as part of a regular check up. It can make a huge difference in their hearing.
Timetrvlr lost his hearing due to his job in mining mills, so fortunately for us Workman’s Comp pays for hearing aids and batteries as his newer ones apparently cost about $8000.00 . Agree that they don’t work really great so I am his best hearing aid. However because of all the sweating he does the in ear aids were a problem as he kept getting ear infections. Now he has the kind that the aids sit on his ears with a tiny tube that fits in the ears. It helps with the infections by allowing the air to circulate, however I am still his best hearing aid.
She recently sprung for two new ones, despite claiming loud & long that they couldn’t possibly be improved any versus the one she got back in 1970 which was never much good but still sorta kinda worked, so was still good enough.
I was fearful that she’d been so close to deaf for so long that despite the new aids working magically well, her brain still wouldn’t hear much. Surprise! She and they together are working awesome, better than any of us had dared to hope. And so she was able to hear for her 89th birthday last week.
You know what really bugs me is the fact that Medi-Cal/ Medicaid etc. don’t cover them. They don’t cover dentures, either.
I would think that those two things are about as fundamental as you can get. Not being able to hear can be life-threatening in traffic (crossing the street) or a fire, and not being able to chew your food can really reduce its nutritive value, to say nothing of possible choking.
I had a great-uncle whose mother was quite deaf for the last several years of her life. He got in the habit of talking VERY LOUDLY AT ALL TIMES, regardless of the situation.
It was fairly common to hear him before you could see him, which was quite a feat–he was 6’ 6". :eek:
