When I was 18 I was having problems with my ears not popping when I was in an airplane or going up an elevator. It became problematic so my parents sent me to the doctor who then refered me to an Ear Nose and Throat specialist. He examined my ears, put me through numerous tests including a hearing test. Turned out I was born with very narrow eustachian tubes – the tubes that connect your ears to your nose. When the air pressure changes they serve as a way for the body to equalize the pressure behind the eardrum and in the inner ear. If they are blocked then the tubes can’t do their job and damage can occur in the inner ear. Learning about this was the beginning of what has been a lifelong challenge of living with a hearing impairment.

The doctor told me then that my hearing at the age of 18 was like that of a 70 year old. So as I aged my hearing would naturally diminish and I could go completely deaf though that was not an inevitability. There was no saying, at the time, what caused this hearing loss or what could be done to help me. He sent me to an audiologist where my hearing was tested once again. This time the results showed that I was suffering from acute loss of sound in the middle range. That is where all the consonant sounds are so my biggest problem was understanding what people were saying because I was not always able to distinguish between certain sounds like s and f, t and d or p, sh or th etc. This lead to a lot of misinterpretation of what people said to me and being teased a lot. I learned to adapt and figure things out often with great embarrassment and through trial and error as most people do.

When I was pregnant for my first child I was terrified I would not hear him crying in the night or if he called out to me from another room. My doctor assured me that as a mother I would instinctively know when my child needed me so I need not worry. It turned out he was right.

Several years later Widex manufactured a hearing aid that could help me and changed my life forever.

Over the years technology has improved and developed so that hearing aids are more sophisticated and adaptable to various forms of hearing impairment. I have grown up with the changes in technology and can tell you it made the world of difference for me. I learned to hear with my whole body – my eyes watching body language, scanning the room to find the best place to sit and listening for context so I knew what the subject matter was. The most important lesson of all was to learn to face people when they talk. I didn’t realize how much I lip read until I was much older. Most of the time my family and friends had no idea how hard I had to work to hear their voice and understand what they had to say.

Now I am a grandmother and my friends are experiencing the same effects of hearing loss due to aging as I did when I was younger. They now understand what I was talking about for so many years. I am teaching my grandchildren how to be more engaging by facing me when they talk because I love hearing their voice and what they have to say.

The mistake that many people make is thinking that hearing aids are like eye glasses that correct the problem so you have perfect hearing. They are not. Once the mechanism in your ears that allow you to process sounds is destroyed it no longer picks up that particular sound no matter how much it is amplified. What the hearing aid does do is help to amplify the sounds that you can still pick up and you have to fill in the blanks using your memory. This is hard work and very tiring. There is so much noise pollution in our world today it is important that we allow ourselves time for silence as well to calm our nervous system. I love hearing the sound of your voice and I also love the sounds of silence.

So Be mindful of the people you are communicating with. They may be hard of hearing. Be careful not to shout. It hurts everyone’s ears and doesn’t make your voice any clearer. It distorts it. Be gentle and compassionate with the person you are communicating with. It goes a long way to being understood.

Helen Keller once said if she had a choice between being blind or deaf she would choose blind because sound connects us to one another through our voices, music, natural sounds. Now more than ever before when we are so isolated it is even more important to communicate with one another in ways that truely connect us. Speak so you can be heard. I love hearing your voice.