Dear Dopers,
My hearing started to deteriorate more than three years ago. My parents first noticed it because they had to repeat themselves several times when wanted to get my attention, even if I was in the same room. At first they just thought I was “zoning out” or paying too much attention to the TV or something, but after colleagues at my last job noticed the same thing, I reluctantly decided to get it checked out.
I had an audiogram done and several tests, and the Doctor’s dignosis was that my hearing was indeed impaired. My eardrums were fine, but the microscopic hairs that sit on the cells of the inner ear were slowly dying off, and there was nothing they could do about it. He said that my hearing would definitely get worse over time, but they couldn’t predict how bad it would get or how quickly it would deteriorate. My condition was genetic, and they couldn’t treat it with drugs or correct it with surgery, so my oly otion was to get a hearing aid.
I took it a little hard at first. I was still only in my early twenties, so the idea of getting hearing aids was a little hard to accept. I guess I was too scared or too proud, but in the end I did nothing. I decided that I’d only get hearing aids if the problem grew into a disability - that is, if it started to affect my work or my social life life.
Well sure enough, that’s exactly what happened. I used to work in an open-plan office, and my bosses were becoming concerned that I couldn’t hear them calling my name across the room. Even worse, my social life was starting to suffer. Whenever I went out my colleagues to lunch, or with my friends and family to a restaurant, I’d have a very difficult time following the various threads of conversation above the background noise.
I’d always miss the jokes, so I’d be left cold while the those aound me laughed. I’d always miss chunks of the conversation, so when people were chatting to me, they thought I was either dumb or wasn’t paying attention to them. In order not to seem rude, I became very adept at reading other people’s faces and eyes and taking my cues from them, laughing when they laughed, smiling at just the right moment, nodding sagely when they had apparently said something weighty and profound. it wasn’t so bad in one-to-one conversations, but group gatherings were hopeless.
In the end I started to withdraw. I could only ask people to repeat themselves so many times before I started to feel foolish, and the joke is never quite as funny the second time around. I could never join in the conversation because I spent so much time and effort straining to make sense of what was going on around me. Eventually people started to talk past me rather than to me, and I started to fade into the background. I stopped going out to lunch with my colleagues and stayed at my desk, munching a sandwich or reading a book…
Eventually I decided that enough was enough. I swallowed my pride and paid for a set of exhorbitantly expensive hearing aids that nestled unobtrusively inside my ear canals. I had some rehabilitation to do, but they certainly helped me filter out some of the background noise. I changed jobs, and my hearing is no longer an issue at work.
Today was bad, though. I forced myself to leave my desk and sit with the others in the pub in an effort to be sociable, but I could barely make sense of about 25% of what was going on around me. People were laughing and chatting around me, having a brilliant time, but I just sat there with an expresion of intense concentration on my face, my eyes flicking from face to face as I strained to catch their words. Then concentration changed to frustration, and faded into sadness. I felt terribly isolated and depressed. I was tempted to just stand up and walk back to the office, but didn’t want to give up. But after about half an hour of this, i cracked.
I’m not a loner by nature. I love having my friends around me and love being a part of things. But I can’t hear what’s going on, so I never hear any of the office gossip and I gradually get sidelined. I feel like standing up nd saying to everyone “Look! I’m actually a really nice guy, OK? If I could hear what the hell you were saying, I’m sure I could participate in a witty and intelligent conversation! Just give me a bloody chance!” But I can’t say that. It’s not their fault I have this problem, and I can’t expect them to treat me differently. I can’t expect them to focus their attention on me or to make an extra special effort to include me, so now I’m stuck with this image of the reclusive loner, when nothing could be further from the truth. I don’t want to retreat into my own little world, I want to be a part of theirs.
Anyway, my hearing is just gradually going to get worse with time. There’s nothing they can do about it, so it looks like I just have to accept it and make sure I have a stock of good books handy for those lunch-hours…
Apologies for the long-winded and self-indulgent post. I’m not sure what good it’ll do by telling you all this, but I thought that maybe I might feel a little better if I articulated my feelings and just got it off my chest.
