Chelle and her husband have been together for almost 20 years. The first night she met him, she told him, “If you plan to hang around me, you’re going to have to keep that mustache well trimmed.” The next morning it was nicely trimmed above his lip. That showed he cared but over the years, other communication breakdowns became an issue.  As mentioned in the last post, he read the book before she published it. His communication habits started to change. There’s something about seeing it in writing that seems to make a difference. That’s why we created a Seven Day Worksheet to help other people track communication breakdowns.

 Free Download

Use the free download to track your communication obstacles, then give it some emotional rant space. When calmer, evaluate the situation and brainstorm it with strategies and technology. At the end of the week, we challenge you to share it with your hearing partner(s) for awareness of daily exchanges. See if they don’t work on their habits too.  If you have the book, we encourage you to share that with them. Maybe they will see themselves in Chelle’s husband.

High frequency hearing loss is the most common hearing loss. Age-related (presbycusis) and noise-induced hearing losses fall into this category. Even though it’s the most common kind, it’s highly misunderstood. People think hearing loss equals more volume. Some volume helps and our hearing devices give us all the volume we need. Clarity is the answer. All sensorineural hearing losses (high frequency, cookie bite and reverse slope) need clarity over volume. With these kinds of hearing loss, hearing aids help but they DO NOT magically restore our hearing. We are left with gaps especially with competing background noise and overlapping voices.

Chelle: My husband is beginning to experience some age related hearing loss. He’s in the mild range while I am in the severe range. He hears far more than me and sometimes too much! Like many people at the beginning stages of hearing loss, he does not wear hearing aids. BUT, he has a hard time understanding speech in noise when he doesn’t have eyes on the speaker. (There’s evidence of that shown in at least a couple of the days in the book.) Luckily, I know how to work with that.

We are not perfect communicators in our house. There are good times – his gestures are creative which makes us both laugh at times. There are bad cycles because we’re hangry and there are the common frustrations most couples have.

Julia likes to say, “Is it 20 years of marriage or hearing loss?”

There’s no good answer. We are human. No one is perfect. Let’s go with progress, not perfection.

An excerpt from the book 61 Days of Hearing Loss. Do you experience this kind of scenario too?

Communication in the car continues to be frustrating with my husband. He’s in my bad ear and he forgets all the time. This cycle repeats over and over in our lives, frustrating us both. I can’t hear over the road noise, especially on freeways at 70+ MPH with other noisy vehicles. 

My hearing professional helped set up a specific program on my hearing aids for this exact reason. It focuses the microphones for side to side listening. The program helps but it doesn’t offer miracles.

Life Lesson

Cars are among the hardest environments to ‘hear’ in. It’s a common complaint for the HoH. If I’m a passenger, I do a lot better because I can use my lipreading skills. When I’m driving, it works better when the other person does their part. If not, it’s okay to sit in silence.

Technology is great. It’s also annoying at times.

As I teach classes related to hearing loss, I share following technology tips with attendees.

At home, I’m back to walking around the neighborhood and I miss the beach. At the beach, I listened to the waves. Today I’m listening to a podcast. Five minutes in, my right hearing aid signals low battery. Searching my vest pockets, I didn’t find a spare battery and I don’t want to return home for more. I keep walking but the warning chime goes off every ten minutes interrupting my concentration for the podcast. Please wait until I get home, I beg the battery.

The battery died about two-thirds of the way through my walk. Now my left hearing aid chimes a “tinkle tinkle tinkle” to let me know my right hearing aid is not online. This sounds off every few minutes. Disgusted, I take both hearing aids out and put them into a sandwich baggy I carry at all times (in case of rain), tucking them into a safe pocket. I didn’t finish my podcast either.

The chime is designed to keep me from walking away from the other hearing aid and losing it. (Maybe this would have helped with the mailbox issue all those years ago, though that lesson has stayed with me for life without the chime.) I do not want this feature and I know my hearing professional can turn it off. When I make my appointment to get a new ear mold, I’ll ask her to turn that off. As soon as I walk into the house, I add two spare batteries to my vest.

Life Lesson

With my last pair of hearing aids, the low battery signal came on more frequently – yet the battery would last all day into the next day. I mentioned this with my audiologist and he said he could turn that off as long as I didn’t mind my hearing aids going dead without warning. I did not mind and I kept it that way for that pair of hearing aids. There are a lot of adjustments to hearing aids if we know the options exist.

Chelle: I wish I knew more about strategies in the 90s because I felt so lost. When I first began wearing hearing aids, I felt small and insignificant because I didn’t know how to improve my communication or how to advocate for myself. Thirty years later, I encounter people with hearing loss who still feel the way I did. Not much has improved. It takes more than hearing devices to live more successfully with hearing loss.  It’s my hope this book shares enough knowledge to help those still in that position.

One more note. I didn’t know how much my communication partners mattered the first 17 years of hearing loss. If they don’t do their part, it’s more difficult receiving their message.

• Were they facing me? It’s an automatic repeat if they weren’t.
• Are they talking from another room? Seeing is hearing. Not only that but hearing aids and cochlear implants work best within 6 feet for many people. At that point, it’s not my fault I couldn’t understand them.
• Without getting my attention first, there’s bound to be another repeat. If my mind is elsewhere, it’s not ready to receive the message.

We both need to change communication habits. As a person with hearing loss, I need to know what works best for me. Then, I need to be able to explain that to others. That’s my part. Their part is follow through. When we both work at it, frustration reduces on both side. Hearing Loss LIVE! welcomes all hearing partners to events with open arms. That’s why we have a Buy One Get One free registration. Together we can change the dynamics.