Better Hearing Consumer

  The other night, I locked the front door before going to bed. Now, we never lock our doors at night, during the day either, because if someone is intent on breaking into the house, they will figure out how to get in. But the Hearing Husband was away for a couple of days, and I am deaf at night.

How about this for Understatement of the Year : Hearing loss messes with your social life and your relationships. When you frown at people, struggling to understand, they think you’re grumpy. When you paste on a dorky Mona Lisa smile because you’ve totally lost the convo, they think something’s wrong with you. When you snarl at people because they mumble,

  An audiogram measures detection. It doesn’t measure effort. The words on a recent LinkedIn post stopped me cold. The concept wasn’t news to me, a person with profound hearing loss, but during this holiday weekend packed with family, children, food, games and noise, it was a powerful and almost painful reminder of how hard I must work to connect

Ireland, at last! A lifelong dream becoming real. But how well would I, with profound hearing loss, understand the rapid-fire and varying accents of the country? Quite well, thank you – with my hearing aid, cochlear implant, Bluetooth, smartphone technology, superb speechreading and steely self-advocacy skills. And when all else fails, a Hearing Husband. Speechreading is a way of life

  I’ll be honest – I have a love/hate relationship with ‘the hand’. A hand is the body part at the end of a human arm used for grasping, touching, and feeling. I’m good with all that. I can pick things up with my hand. I can touch your face or punch you in the arm. And, a new skill

  What do our hearing aids tell other people about us? It should be just one thing – the devices help us hear. Not that we’re broken, or lesser than – in fact, just the opposite. Using hearing aids should indicate that we have identified a problem and have taken steps to address it. The adjective ‘broken’ means damaged or

Is this you? On the surface, you appear to have this hearing loss thing nailed. You wear the technology, you self-identify without shame, and you can, in 30 seconds flat, rearrange a room and group of people to your hearing and speechreading advantage! Yet, day after day, aspects of hearing loss make you mad. If so, you’re not alone. For

I’m feeling a touch grumpy. I get this way when I see people telling other people how they should self-identify with hearing loss or deafness. And I get grumpier when they start shaming. “You can’t call yourself THAT! Because you’re NOT that! I am THAT! You’re THIS, because I say so (based on my own limited knowledge of the full

Yesterday, my tinnitus was bad. Loud and constant. It roared and rolled, swooped and yelled, filling every corner of my cranium, wanting to escape to the outside world. I wish it could, so that people could better understand what I, and millions like me, go through. Tinnitus isn’t painful, in the way that stubbing a toe hurts like heck or

  I’ve got my annual June blues – the feelings that always follow my time at the Hearing Loss Association of America (HLAA) convention. As much as I love my Hearing Husband and my wonderful Hearing Friends, after attending the conference I miss the connectedness of being with people – lots of people – who get each other. We understand