Better Hearing Consumer

Happy 10th anniversary to me!  This summer marks a full 10 years that I’ve been writing the Better Hearing Consumer (BHC) column for the Hearing Health & Technology Matters (HHTM) website. Ten years! That’s longer than a lot of my past relationships (although going 30-years strong with the Hearing Husband!). Soon I will have posted my 500th blog! When HHTM was started by

Regardless of who you live with, if one of you has hearing loss, communication is going to be affected. It can be tough to navigate, or not so tough, depending on a few key factors applicable to all parties. How well do they communicate in general? How patient are they in dealing with challenges? Most importantly, how much do they care

We’re not all the same, you know. You can’t assume that if you know one person with hearing loss (PWHL) well, then you understand how all of us operate. Even if our audiograms (the graph/picture of a person’s hearing loss) look the same on paper, how we actually live with, handle or consider our individual hearing losses is as individual as how

Have you ever gone on a walk and wondered what, because of your hearing loss, you are not hearing? Or you hear sounds but you’re not sure what you’re hearing, so you ask the person you’re hiking with – what’s that? Now, ‘that’ could be one of several sounds a hearing person can hear at that moment, so you might

After a year, I’m changing how I deal with masked communication difficulties. I still don’t like wearing masks. It unnerves me that they are going to be a standard facial accessory for a long time to come. But I will continue wearing them, because I don’t believe being asked to wear one is an infringement on heaven-sent rights. Anyone who’s

I finally watched ‘Sound of Metal’, prepared to dislike it intensely. Truth? I was hoping I would dislike it intensely, because of everything I’d heard: how it got so much wrong about cochlear implants (CI), its single-note depiction of Deaf Culture bias against cochlear implants, its misrepresentation of how hearing health professionals work and, most importantly, how it left out

A friend of mine posted the above meme this morning, which was adapted from an article by Adam Grant for the New York Times. It stopped me cold. Languishing: the void between depression and flourishing – the absence of well-being. Exactly! This is exactly how so many of us are feeling these days. It’s been more than a year since

As a user of hearing technology, do you ever catch yourself looking at other people’s ears? With the popularity of earbuds, headphones, and AirPods and other “hearables”, we don’t have to look too long find someone with something in or on their ears. But then, there it is! A glint of silver behind the ear, an almost imperceptible bit of

Do you live in a mixed marriage or relationship – where one person has typical hearing and the other has hearing loss? How’s that working out for you? For years, I have been writing about my Hearing Husband. (His given name is Doug, but he responds reasonably well to “Hearing Husband”.) The man has supported and cheered me through years

Do you ever go online looking for advice from other people? And have you ever shifted your way of thinking about your hearing loss or tinnitus because of something you read there? There is some seriously life-changing information out there, folks! I’m not talking about the stuff that hearing science is still trying to work out – such as how to scientifically get