I am one of the funky outliers - I have hearing loss in the midrange, and know it - I do a bit of lipreading. I also have extreme end phenomenal hearing, to the point where I was a lab rat for the Navy’s sound lab, and worked on a project where I was listening for white and pink noise embedded in other noise. I shut the study down once for 4 hours while we determined I was hearing the 60 cycle line noise from the PC they were using to generate the noises while the actual tone generators were down. Once we shut down the people in the adjacent rooms, which I was also hearing their studies. Yup, I hear dog whistles. I can probably not understand you talking to me in the same room if you whisper … :smack:
Almost none of our oldsters would consistently wear their hearing aids when they were still alive. Guess it’s one of those things you don’t truly understand until you’re experiencing it.
I remember the frustration well. There’s little more tiring than repeating yourself. And then, on top of that, they get forgetful and even when they can hear you they’ll ask the same question or make the same comment numerous times during the conversation. Sometimes you will have the same conversation with them every time you see them until they are no longer able to think or speak.
It helps if you can develop a sense of humor about it because there will be a lot of funny interactions. The stories I could tell!
If you love your old folks and want for both of you to have a relatively comfortable transition to the end perhaps this is a good time to start practicing patience and forgiveness for their failings. The situation, if protracted, is only going to get more difficult as time goes on.
I learned a lot from a cousin who worked in a nursing home when I called him to tell him I tried the best I could to get my parents to take care of themselves and to take care of them but they made it nearly impossible. What to do?
His advice (which I disagreed with at the time) was to let them keep the dignity of their choices. It was hair-raising. I was so afraid they’d do themselves in with their mistakes.
But we finally managed through it all with a minimum of frustrating power struggles.
Obviously this advice doesn’t apply to serious and life-threatening issues. But you’ll probably also run into a few of those as well down the line. So practice on the small stuff.
My great-uncle refuses adamantly to even get tested for needing a hearing aid. He can’t even tell if someone else is talking without looking at them now, forget tell what they’re saying. I presume he lipreads.
It’s incredibly frustrating, especially as most of his friends now have hearing aids, but he still won’t even consider it
He was happy enough to go for cataract surgery, which seems much more invasive and just as heavily associated with aging, so it’s a bit of a surprise that he’s so reluctant to do anything about his equally dodgy hearing.
I dunno–is it? I’ve worn glasses/contacts all my life (until LASIK), and have met a ton of people, young and old, that refused to wear their glasses. They would always have some unconvincing excuse; that they didn’t like the look or that they forgot them or whatever. Personally, I’d sooner leave the house without pants than without vision correction; it’s unimaginable to me to do otherwise (and this is despite really, really hating both glasses and contacts). Obviously some people have a very different attitude towards handicaps than I do.
I haven’t read any of the posts. This is my biggest peeve. I have been in houses that have the TV blaring. Sometime in three different rooms on different shows. Conversations that make no sense. Miscommunications all over the place. I am tired of being mistreated by others disability when that disability can be corrected. (I know not all can be). I will not go to some peoples house because their noise actually hurts my ears. When I visit my mother I have to wear earplugs. She won’t wear her aids. Earplugs have become my friend and I use them a lot.
Does he think they’re “for old people”? That’s the reason my mother gives and she’s 73 - once you’ve been getting a senior discount for 8 years I’d say you count as “old”.
HA. Hearing aids aren’t just for old people. I’ve worn them for thirty years, since I was three. Mine are bright purple. (BTE style) Although most hearing loss IS age/late deafened related. There’s an organization called Hearing Loss Association of America, and sadly it is FILLED with Old People. Like talk about fiber and the Latest Trip to Wal-mart/ Meals on Wheels, let’s get all gosh a rootie, indidduly duddly do boring. It’s such a boring organization I call them the League of Polyester Pants (b/c they wet their polyester pants over the latest Assistive Listening Devices)
It really is about attitude.
No, his main response to the suggestion is that he doesn’t really need them and, besides, they don’t really work well anyway. He’s remembering his stepfather, whose deeply discounted (read, “cheap”) aids were always malfunctioning.
Of course, if his back is turned any you speak in a normal tone of voice, he has no idea anyone’s there. But, no, he doesn’t really need them. :rolleyes:
ETA: We both know we’re officially “old people.”
My 78YO dad is convinced that his hearing loss is due to his days as a Navy pilot back in the late '50’s and early '60’s, flying VIP’s all over the world in multiengine prop planes. I’m convinced it’s due to the subsequent decades of using all manner of power tools and hammers with no ear protection whatsoever.
A couple of years ago my mom finally badgered him into getting hearing aids. He saw a professional audiologist, got an expensive set that could be tailored to his particular needs. He wore them during our Christmas visit, and it was nice; he was able to participate in conversations with ease, we didn’t have to repeat ourselves or raise our voices to be heard. At dinner he complained about my brother habitually chewing with his mouth open (“you really chew loud!” :D), something he never noticed before.
But he complained about the sound quality: things like running water sounding like crumpling paper. I’m not in his shoes I guess, but cripes, that seems like a small price to pay if you’re able to socialize again. He stopped wearing them after about a year. Without them he is not enthusiastic about going out to restaurants with friends (background noise makes hearing conversation difficult), and he doesn’t participate in rapidfire bull sessions that take place at the family dinner table when we all get together. One-on-one is OK, but you have to be sitting next to him and speaking loudly and there can’t be a ton of other background noise in the room. The TV volume is way up again too.
Frustrating.
Mine have changed my life. And my husband’s life, and my son’s life. I try to wear them as much as possible. Not perfect, but better than not hearing.
My dad’s hearing is terrible, even with his in. He takes his out when he uses the phone, then hollers and asks us to repeat frequently. He is in very very very (I wouldn’t know if I didn’t work in the field) cognitive decline. He has always had habits of being aloof and irritable when he feels left out. It is really difficult to know if he doesn’t hear us, is ignoring us, or is blanking on something. My poor mother.
A major issue with aids is that when you first get them you hear sounds you haven’t heard in years and it can be overwhelming.
I knew that but still the second day I had mine I asked my wife why she was making so damn much noise reading the newspaper. The audiologist had warned me about this and said that my brain would adjust. It took about two weeks and mine did.
Many people just won’t wear them long enough for the brain to adjust. It seems you need to wear them continuously to get quick results and a lot try to do it by wearing them for short periods and that doesn’t work well.
And as far as them correcting my hearing, if they don’t, they do a damn good job of imitating it.
This so so true. The first day I was wearing them and we went for supper to a quiet Chinese/Singaporean restaurant. Or I thought it was quiet. It was 4 in the afternoon, and the sound of people setting tables, clattering cutlery, scooping ice… (funny how I knew exactly what that sound was despite my not recalling hearing that sound in years) just about drove me insane. It was the sound of my own chewing that drove me to take them out.
Thank god someone beat me to it. So good.
Ooooh - and if you do have hearing aids, please don’t turn then off when you don’t want to be bothered. Supposedly my father-in-law was in the habit of doing this for a while.
And DO get technology to help you during those times when wearing a hearing aid isn’t appropriate (like sleeping). My mother-in-law fell in the bathroom, and called for help, and he didn’t hear her. If they hadn’t had a houseguest at the time, she’d have spent hours lying there.
Now I’m wondering whether one of the reasons my mother now makes so much noise when chewing is that she can’t hear it any more. Drives me batty.
One of my college teachers did the turn the hearing aids off thing for classes. Just one more item in a long list of reasons nobody liked him.