Hearing is Believing

I appreciate what Helen Keller once said: “Blindness separates you from things, deafness separates you from people.”  Vision identifies the tangible world, and sound connects people via their spoken words.   Hearing, as well as seeing, is believing.

Yesterday I saw a new Au.D. who practices audiology in The City.  It was past time for my hearing aids to be updated; I hadn’t been professionally evaluated for over two years.  I knew my hearing was worse.  It was time to go.

My visit was basically good despite one small fact: this practitioner doesn’t usually deal with my specific brand and model of aids, and he had to call for technical support to download critical information about them.  That was fine, just took a little time, but there was another not-so-small, related fact. When he tried to use plastic heads from another brand of hearing aids, one got stuck deep in my left ear.  “Now THAT’S not good,” he said, and exited the room in high gear. I didn’t know for sure why he left in such a rush, but learned later he decided to look for surgical forceps in a back closet.  Ah yes.  The silver tongs with long handles and pointy tips. 

He found them and proceeded to dig around in my ear canal, trying to grip the lodged plastic – think tiny plunger intentionally made to grip, suction-like, and therefore prevent amplified sound from escaping.  Only now it was too deep, and unattached to the outside world. He kept asking, “Are you alright?  Are you alright?”  I felt like asking him the same thing, but didn’t. Eventually it came out and we both blew out bellow-sized sighs.  Whewww. 

The good news is that my aids appear to be in excellent shape and are functioning well, and now have been downloaded with new compensations based on hearing loss that has compounded over the last couple of years. The other good news is that technology marches on, and when it is time to buy a new pair, I will be a candidate for some that literally “recreate” consonant sounds I no longer can hear.  As I understand it, they would mimic these sounds (think “s” or “ph” for example) only in lower tones I could hear better.  Evidently my brain would need to relearn how to listen and interpret them, but would compensate in time.  

C’mon brain, you can do anything if you really want to.  And I know you want to.

I’m not a math person in any sense of the word (numbers and I barely tolerate each other in mandatory situations, even card-playing), but the graph below shows the results of my current hearing test better than anything I could say.  The yellow bar at the top designates the range of normal hearing.  Sounds progress in pitch, low to high, from left to right.  Obviously I don’t hear many high tones anymore (think bird calls, leaves rustling, children chattering).

I feel intense gratitude for my digital hearing aids that are a far cry from my first analog ones, and the promise of further help as time passes and technology escalates.   I am especially thankful for the ability to connect with you (and you and you) via auditory cues - because, after all, hearing you is believing you.