Remember taking tests?

I went to the audiologist at TCU’s Miller Speech and Hearing Clinic today. Not because I was having unusual problems, but because I volunteered to be part of a clinical study. Turns out the study is the honors project of a senior student—sort of like an undergraduate thesis. And it’s really complicated, so hats off to her and to TCU (and audiologist Tracy Burger) for providing this great learning experience.

I’ve been seeing Tracy for four or five years and consider her a friend, though I never see her outside the clinic. But she’s helpful, knowledgeable, and lots of fun. Still I went with trepidation. Do you remember taking tests in high school and college and fearing you’d failed? That’s how I feel about the audiologist and the ophthalmologist.

Today I was hooked up to some machines and had to listen to a series of beeps, raising my hand whenever I heard the beep. Okay, except that sometimes I thought maybe I was imagining the beep, and Tracy and Sarah would think I was foolish for raising my hand. My other problem was that it was a tad boring, and my mind tended to wander, so then with a start I’d come back to the present and think, “Was that a beep?” Maybe you remember trying to psych out the pattern on machine-generated tests—didn’t we call them bubble tests? Anyway I tried the same thing, looking through the mirror at Sarah, watching her reactions, noting when she stopped to write something. I don’t think it helped one bit. I was sure I failed.

We progressed to listening for what Tracy called “Shush” sounds—I told her I missed some, because I didn’t recognize that they were a “shush”—one sounded more like low-key trilling to me. That made Tracy self-conscious about the words she used to describe the sounds, and I in turn apologized. Some adjustment of my hearing aids followed and then we did the shush sounds again. By now, pleasant company aside, I was getting antsy. I never said I’m a patient person.

The last exercise was repeating words. A disembodied voice said, “You will say dog,” and I was to say “dog.” I think it would be easier if he just said, “Dog,” and omitted the “You will say.” There were a bunch of words that I felt fairly confident about, but then a static background came in, and my confidence disappeared. The test revealed what I already know—background noise dramatically wipes out my hearing. Without the static, I scored 76% (truly I thought I did 100%); with the static it dropped to 50-something. One reason I am uncomfortable in many restaurants.

Hearing difficulties can’t be solved by just turning up the volume. Somehow the brain is linked in there. In many instances, I hear a word clearly, but it just doesn’t register with my brain. It’s like it’s a foreign language—and then I’ll find out it’s a simple word like “vacation.” I miss a lot in sermons and lectures because of this. If I don’t “plug in” at the beginning of a talk, I’m liable to be lost all the way through.

The upshot of today’s testing is that my hearing is no better, no worse. And I left with instructions to play a mind game (with a musical background) on my phone for 40 minutes a week for the next two months and email a screen shot of the results to Sarah every week. (I had to be taught about screen shots too—such a Luddite.) I can do this, and I’m glad to be part of an educational experiment.

Next week: an ophthalmologist’s appointment. Now that one really makes me nervous. When they say, “Which is better, one or two?” I always want to ask, “Who’s grading this test?” Yikes.

Of kitchens and pigeons--and hearing loss

On our weekly dinner outing tonight, my friend Betty and I enjoyed tomato basil soup and one crab cake each at Winslow's Wine Café. It was good, but the café was so loud that I could hear little of what she said. Even adjusted to restaurant setting, my hearing aids only do so much. We asked the waitress about moving outside, in spite of heat, but she warned that the flies were really bad. So we enjoyed a lopsided conversation. We agreed next week would be someplace quiet.
As I got out of the car, Betty suggested a restaurant but it was a name I wasn't familiar with. She kept repeating it--somebody's Kitchen. I wondered why I'd never heard of it, since I'm the one who scouts out new places. Finally she said "On White Settlement Road," and I suddenly got it--the Clay Pigeon, one of my all-time favorites. I simply misheard "Pigeon" for "Kitchen."
Mishearings are a common part of hearing loss. It's not that you don't hear, your brain simply doesn't process the word correctly, substituting something else entirely, usually a word that fits the sentence structure but makes no sense.
In the July 5 issue of the New York Times Oliver Sachs wrote an essay about mishearings,, citing the time he thought his assistant said she was going to choir practice. He was puzzled because in all the years they'd worked together, he'd never heard her mention church, let alone choir. Turned out she was going to the chiropractor. Other mishearings he cited: poetry bag, for grocery bag; oral numbness, for all-or-noneness; and the corker, "Kiss my feet!" for Christmas Eve.
This business of mishearing is one of the most frustrating about hearing loss. Sachs cited all kinds of theories, including the Freudian analysis of word substitution (which he discarded). I think the brain is scrambling so hard to make sense of what the ears don't really hear that it substitutes a word.
Particularly on the phone, it is sometimes hard--impossible?--for me to make sense of one word. I get everything else that's being said but that one word. This frustrates particularly my brother and my youngest daughter--and then I am left feeling guilty. As Oliver Sachs says, the best course is to see the humor in it but that too is hard.
But I'm looking forward to dinner at the Clay Pigeon.

Huh? The world of the hearing challenged

I had an appointment with a new and very helpful audiologist today. I've been "hearing challenged" for twenty years or so, many of them spent in denial. Not me, I said. I never listened to loud music much. I didn't fly in a lot of airplanes. I finally got over my denial when I read that women who had been given a certain combination of hormone therapy were experiencing early hearing loss. My family pushed, shoved, and threatened not to talk to me if I didn't do something about it. The first EENT doctor I went to said I needed an aid in at least one ear, he didn't care which one, and had his audiologist hand me a pair to take home and try on. No testing, no fitting, no directions. I declined, went to a commercial audiologist and was tested, fitted with aids, and seen every three months. Three pairs of hearing aids later (and they are not cheap!) my hearing is still a problem.
In really noisy restaurants, I might as well rudely pull out my cell phone and occupy myself because I can't hear a word; church is difficult but I catch most of it; even a gathering of six for happy hour in my own home was difficult for me today. I kept waving my hands and saying what we say to the grandchildren, "Inside voices! Inside voices!" The phone is impossible and particularly difficult with my brother who gets upset when I can't hear and don't tell him. And this morning Jordan was trying to say "warm, wet washrag" to me and she might as well have been speaking Greek. I had to hand the phone to Jacob. Sometimes, you can hear the person talking clearly but the comprehension just isn't there. As a result, I'm probably really rude to telephone solicitors, and every once in a while I come close to missing an important call because I don't understand what's being said.
Today I learned that I haven't had my hearing tested in four years; nor have my hearing aids been adjusted to my changing needs. I was tested (actually improved a bit), the aids adjusted. I learned how to hold the cell phone so that the speaker is directly over the receiver of my aid instead of squarely in my ear. I was challenged to wear my aids all day every day so my brain wouldn't have to keep trying to adjust. Other hints included sitting as far from loudspeakers as possible in restaurants, and sitting with my back to the noise. There's more to be done, but I feel encouraged tonight. When I came home at lunch, even the domestic sounds of rattling around in the kitchen sounded loud.
Hearing loss, as I've learned, can isolate you, even from friends you care about, and it frustrates those around you. I'm going to keep working at this. And if you're in denial, as I was, go do something about it. You'll be glad.
 

My whine for the day

I have a good friend who is visually challenged--okay, he's almost virtually blind. He has a service dog, a white cane, and a lovely wife who looks out for him every minute. We all look out for him, telling him when there's a table or chair in his path, guiding him to a chair, pointing out where his food is, handing him his drink. Oh, every once in a while there's a blind joke--like the time someone asked him if a certain person had curly hair and he dead-panned, "I have no idea."
I am hearing impaired, and I get lots of jokes and teasing. "You got your ears in?" "Can you hear me?" Some people speak so clearly and distinctly on the phone, they're a joy to talk to; others talk too rapidly or softly, and I find myself asking them to slow down, speak up, always apologizing that I'm "a tad hard of hearing." Tad hardly describes it. Music in church never sounds the same--my friend who cannot see also wears hearing aids, though he doesn't seem to have as much trouble as I do, but he agrees music never again will sound the same. If I'm in a room with ten friends all talking at once or in a noisy restaurant, forget it! I may get snatches of the conversation but not enough to tune in. Sometimes, people make an effort to speak clearly and distinctly...and I still don't get it. Part of hearing loss is a sort of loss of comprehension (I've read this so it's not just my senile brain)--you hear the words but they don't make sense. And then when they do suddenly make sense, you're embarrassed. I have come up with some really odd interpretations--like the other daughter said she wanted something, and I said, "You want caviar?"
Don't get me wrong. I'd a lot rather lose my hearing than my sight, and I admire my friend up one side and down the other for the way he lives his life--traveling, partying, enjoying himself. Until a couple of years ago, he worked; he still reads and works on the computer, though I not sure with what kind of enhancements.
But sometimes I wish loss of hearing wasn't treated as the joke of old age. It's a real problem for me, folks. No, I don't think it changes my life much--but it embarrasses and frustrates me.
Okay, whine over. As you were.

Adam's Off Ox

My children have always been wonderful about including me, as have their friends. So it came as a shock last weekend, when most of us gathered in my oldest daughter's Austin home, to realize they were all in a circle in the kitchen...and I sat at the far end of the huge granite kitchen island, clearly out of the loop. The few comments I tried to add to the conversation went unnoticed. I was isolated  amidst a sea of noise. With the grandchildren and TV in the background and the grown children all talking (they get louder with a drink or two) all I heard was a cacaphony of sounds that I could make no sense of. If I took my hearing aids out, I heard a faint rumble. I felt about as useless as Adam's off ox.
I think it's a circular problem. I have a hard time hearing, so I retreat to my book or my iPad. The children think, "Mom's reading her book or Facebook" and count me out. They think I'm not interested in their talk, not realizing how much I want to be part of it. I don't think this is my problem alone--hearing people don't realize the isolation of the hearing impaired.
I certainly don't want to demand that they all talk directly to me, but yet I want to be part of their conversations. It was, after all, a family gathering. I talked to Colin, the oldest, about it the next morning, and he said, "We'll figure something out." But I think the solution is up to me, and I'll begin by making an appointment with my audiologist. And then I think I'll make it a point at Thanksgiving to put my book aside and slide right into the middle of that circle.
But I have a plea for those of you who have a hearing-impaired family member--don't lose patience when they don't understand--a funny thing about hearing loss: sometimes I hear the words but they don't transmit to my brain as anything meaningful. And maybe go out of your way to see that they are in the conversation.
And don't choose noisy restaurants!
This is not a problem I ever expected to have. I have not flown in a lot of noisy planes nor listened to a lot of loud music--neithr is my style. I suspect, from things I've read, that my hearing loss traces back to a combination of hormones that I was given in the '90s. But that is neither here nor there--my hearing is getting worse, and I don't like it. It's up to me, no one else, to learn to deal with it. But, gosh, guys, I'd like a little help...and a lot of love.