I am in the same boat. I have invested $3,000 in a new pair of hearing aids, I am better off hearing but not better off in the wallet.
I do this a lot as well, its not that big of deal for people who know I can’t hear but timetimes I can tell people are getting uncomfortable at me staring at their mouth the whole time. From what I understand there is a treatment for Tinnitus (sp?). It is essentially a hearing aid that broadcasts a sound sympathetic to the one you hear and over time you become desensitized to it. After a while you gan get rid of the hearing aid and your hearing is supposed to have returned towards normal (towards meaning not always completely cured). As a side not IIRC William Shatner had this done, his tinnitus was so bad it was driving him crazy to the point he was considering suicide.
The ringing my ears isin’t what is so bad, now the voices…
If the war inside my head won’t take a day off I’ll be dead - Megadeth
Old joke about an old guy:
An old man goes to the doctor and says his wife is getting hard of hearing but won’t admit it. “How can I get her to see that it’s a problem?”
The doctor tells him to stand behind her sometime when she doesn’t know he’s there and, in a normal speaking voice, call her name. If she doesn’t answer take a step closer and call her name again. Keep doing this until she answers, then show her how close you had to get before she could hear you.
The next night after dinner the wife is standing at the sink doing the dishes. He stands about five feet behind her and says, “Mary?”. No response. So he steps closer and says, “Mary?”. Still no response. He steps closer and says, “Mary?”. Nothing. Now he’s almost touching her and he says, “Mary?”. She turns around and says, “I’ve answered you three times already!! What, George?”
Happens to me ALL the time, and people think I’m a perverted sicko…
I also have hearing problems, mine started as a complication of an extremely premature birth. I have found that my ability to hear depends on the room I’m in as well. There are some rooms that absorb the sound and I find it very frustrating to be in them. I agree there are some voices and some type of speakers that give me trouble, if the person has a very soft, or very high pitched voice I can have a real problem with hearing them. I know that I do subconsciously read lips because I can hear much better with my glasses on than off. It amazes me how much I can pick up just by lip reading. sometimes it comes in handy when I’m watching sporting events on TV I have a pretty good idea what the players are saying to the umps. Another thing that hasn’t been touched on is the environment, most people think if you have a hearing problem you can hear better in a noisy enviroment compared to a quieter one, the problem is that the sounds you are trying to hear are only slightly above the background noise level and in effect are perceived as being faint, quiet and hard to hear. So I generally avoid going to bars and partie ecause it isn’t any fun being in a group and being unable to follow what’s going on 
Keith
I, too, have this problem. I have excellent hearing; I can hear things normally that other people have to concentrate to hear, but if I can’t see the speaker’s mouth, or if there’s other noise in the room, I can’t hear.
I once told a friend that when he’s trying to speak to me in a crowded room, that he should start by saying my name. I never fail to hear that! Of course, that led to madcap zaniness…
Whenever I hear Bill Shatner sing on one of those Priceline commercials, I consider suicide.
I have that same problem thanks to Uncle Sammy insisting I spend three years working on jet aircraft a while back.
I also had the enormous pleasure of spending six months on an aircraft carrier sleeping in a compartment directly under the number three wire. When a jet lands, the tailhook hits the deck first, and the #3 wire is the place it hits the most. Imagine sleeping in an oil drum and having someone walk by and whack it with a sledgehammer at random intervals.
When I got out, they gave me a hearing test, and I had a ‘dead’ spot at one particular frequency, 5k cycles IIRC.
They didn’t even say “Sorry”.
I’ve also noticed that I can hear someone much better if I’m looking at their face. This drives Mrs. B crazy, as she hates to have to stop what she’s doing and face me to talk to me. And yes, I really do listen to her. i just can’t hear her a good part of the time.
You should get a hearing test where they have you listen for different frequencies. It will probably be educational.
Hearing aids today are great. They are programable! You can program what sounds you need & a bunch of other stuff. They are pretty small too. Have a look see at them. Costco has them cheaper than most.
Yep. Tinnitus. Loud. all the time in both ears, the left one worse.
11 years a jet engine mechanic in the Air Force. before I was able to cross train. My loss is in the 5000-6000 Hz range. Incredibly, the same range of the intake noise of a jet. Hmmmmmmmmmm.
Sometimes I just flat out don’t hear people, and forget conversation in any but the quietest restaurants. I haven’t resorted to hearing aids yet; from what I’ve read, they would mostly just make me not hear well louder. Unless it was one of those new tuneable digital ones, and they’re hellishly expensive.
I’ve got the same problems…intermittant tinnitus and some hearing loss from a series of terrible ear infections through my teens. I’ve learned to read lips a bit and to infer A LOT from context. I’ve also noticed that stereos with the treble cranked actually hurts my ears.
fortunately my sister and several of my friends are fluent in sign language, so communicating at clubs and such is quite easy.
Last night I was at my friends hockey game, and I could have sworn people were yelling “Butt Cheeks” when actually it was, “Go Chiefs”.
But since to me, they sounded the same, I went with Butt Cheeks for the rest of the night.
My stepfather has been an Air Force jet engine mechanic for 20+ years now, and it has only been in the last couple of years that he started to notice that his hearing wasn’t quite what it used to be. He had it tested and he also has some loss in the 5000-6000 mHz range, which the audiologist also attributed to the noise of the jet engine. He is still working on the planes, but he now makes sure he always has ear plugs in so his hearing doesn’t get any worse.
My grandfather on my mom’s side has been almost completely deaf since WWII, but absolutely refuses to learn sign language. Just in the last five years or so, his wife (grandma) has also been progressively losing her hearing (probably due to the fact that grandpa insists on watching TV with the volume all the way up) and also refuses to learn sign language. You should see these two try to have a conversation. It is absolutely hilarious.
I perforated both ear drums in the service and have had constant ringing that started even before that. When I was in, the only ear protection gun crews had was plugs devised from cigarette filters, a situation that I hope has changed. Hearing loss was common enough that nobody took it seriously unless it was near total.
This is why senior petty officers and NCOs shout so much.
I remember about a year ago watching a programme which had a section on an experimental cure for tinnitus. They make you listen to something around the same pitch and frequency you hear constnatly from the tinnitus. This forces the little hairs in your ears that help with hearing go straight or change to the rigt direction - thus temporarily muting or stopping the sound completely. It was still under trial in Europe and I don’t know whether it was continued but patients reported less discomfort with each treatment.
Maybe someone medically knows more?
nadin
You realize there are going to be many, many more cases of “relaxed” or deficient hearing in the near future due to the dramatic increase in concert and automobile volume (not to mention walkmans).
I wonder what the longterm effects are, other than the obvious decrease in audible reception.
The next sporting event I attend, I am going to start a rousing cheer of “Butt Cheeks” in honor of you Mega, this made me laugh, thanks.
" (probably due to the fact that grandpa insists on watching TV
with the volume all the way up)"
Turn on the closed captions! If there tv has them. ANy tv made after July '93 does.
When you cannot hear others very well, you can’t hear yourself well, so you talk REALLY LOUD. Two people who don’t hear well can be pretty LOUD when they have a conversation.
Okay. Here’s today’s example of how embarrassing this hearing thing is.
Walking past the art department here at work, I overheard someone say, “I saw you got your enlarged penis back this morning. It’s really impressive. Was it a sucked oral?”
Translation: I saw you got your enlarged print back this morning. It’s really impressive. Was it a stock photo?
Don’t ask my how I screwed that one up. Art department thought it was hilarious, though.
Is it possible to have Freudian hearing slips? Or is struuters mind just in the gutter? Not that there is anything wrong wiht that, mine is too. It’s where all my friends are 