Gael Hannan

Gael Hannan is an author, speaker and advocate on hearing loss issues. In addition to her weekly blog at the Better Hearing Consumer, which has a passionate international following, Gael has written two acclaimed books, “The Way I Hear It: A Life with Hearing Loss”and “Hear & Beyond: Live Skillfully with Hearing Loss”, written with Shari Eberts. She is regularly invited to present her uniquely humorous and insightful work to appreciative audiences around the world. Gael has received many awards for her work that advocates for individuals to become more knowledgeable and successful at dealing with their hearing loss and a more inclusive society for them to live in.

Goose Bumps: Reflections from the AG Bell Convention

My guest blogger this week is Wendy Kupfer, author of the renowned children’s book “Let’s Hear It for Almigal”. When doctors diagnosed Wendy’s daughter, Ali, with a profound hearing loss at the age of 10 months, they also predicted she would never speak. They underestimated the determination and drive of this mother and daughter who, in achieving their goals, also

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Stupid Things to Do with Your Hearing Aids

Really, how many old hearing aid molds does a person need to keep? The Hearing Husband and I recently sold the house we’d lived in for 16 years, and it was time to clean out the Stuff We Don’t Need. It was an excruciatingly slow process, the drawer-to-drawer, closet-to-closet search of accumulated things, deciding what to keep and what to

Featured image for “What Do You Call a Group of HoHs?”

What Do You Call a Group of HoHs?

The only sound in the lobby of the Renaissance Austin this morning was a faint echo of 1150 people with hearing loss, most of whom had left the day before. It’s difficult to appreciate how noisy that many hard of hearing, deafened, oral deaf, hearing aid users and cochlear implant users can be—unless you spend three or more days with them

Featured image for “Being Hard of Hearing in 1921”

Being Hard of Hearing in 1921

Never judge a book by its cover – even an inexpensive photocopied one – because what’s inside might be jaw-dropping. This week, sorting through 20 years’ accumulation of hearing loss material, I was about to pitch out a spiral-bound booklet called 80 Years of Looking & Learning. I opened it and was mesmerized. Compiled in 2001 by the early lip reading

A Casual Consumer Guide to Hearing Care Professionals

Do you like looking in people’s ears? Can you look people in the eye and articulate clearly? Does technology turn your crank? Are you a curious problem-solver? Do you have a bottomless cup of patience and empathy and curiosity? If you can answer ‘yes’ to all of these questions, then you might consider a career in hearing healthcare. It’s a

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A Crystal Ball into Hearing Loss

It’s time for the annual look at what’s in the stars for people with hearing loss. Because astrology isn’t my ‘thing’ – as in I don’t believe in it – I searched the internet for the connection between astrology and hearing loss. I found this: The ear, as a region of nose, throat and ear, falls under Taurus and,

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Arguing About Hearing Loss

“Ex-CUSE me? I most certainly do not!” ”Why are you raising your voice….and what is it that you most certainly don’t?” “Oh, very funny….you know… what you just said…about what I do…because of my hearing loss!” “What? All I said is sometimes you get things wrong, you don’t hear them right, especially when you’re upset…like now.” “Oh, like you don’t?

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A Hard of Hearing Line Dancer (Does Austin)

My foot is tapping impatiently as I wait for June and the Hearing Loss Association of America’s annual Convention in Austin, one of America’s top music cities. Makes you want to let rip with a whoo-hoo or hee-haw or whatever it is they yell in Texas when they get excited and feel like singin’ and dancin’! HLAA’s annual convention draws hundreds

Sitting Here, Deaf (Waiting for My Hearing Aids)

The hearing care professionals laugh at us. We’re the people who put off doing anything about our hearing loss for years. Yet, once we have our hearing aids or cochlear implants, we can’t go without them for even a moment. Last week, I spent three interminable hours while my hearing aids were ‘being looked at’. Sitting Here, Deaf

My CI and Me: A Work in Progress

By Lynne Kinsey I got a cochlear implant in October 2013. Remarkably, I am hearing things I haven’t heard in almost 25 years: birds, leaves crunching beneath my feet, leaf blowers, traffic noises, the furnace, dishwasher and refrigerator noises, children playing and babies cooing, some music and instruments – even my computer keys as I’m typing this. Many of