Better Hearing Consumer

A human being is an amazing creature, capable of amazing things: we can think, talk, see, hear, feel pleasure and pain, show compassion, move forwards-backwards-sideways and, as the advertisements say, so much, much more. Perfect people would operate flawlessly on this scale of amazingness – but do such people really exist? Surely even the most perfect, got-it-all person has something

Last week, in my article “Why I Dread My Annual Hearing Test”, I wrote about how hearing evaluations make us anxious even if – or especially if – we’ve had them before. Comments from readers ranged from “yeah, I don’t like them either” to this: “I can’t tell you how much I HATE hearing tests! I live daily knowing just

This week, I’m scheduled for a hearing checkup and I am not particularly looking forward to it. Odd, isn’t it, that a person with lifelong hearing loss and who’s had upward of 60 annual checkups can still feel uneasy at the thought of it? It’s not that I don’t like the audiologists who conduct the tests. Far from it, audiologists

Do you suspect you might have hearing loss? Has hearing loss recently been positively, absolutely confirmed? Have you lived with it for some time? Whatever stage of the hearing loss journey you’re at, chances are you’ve hurled these questions at the universe: Why me? What happened? Why now?  These questions are easy to ask, but the answers aren’t always easy

Sometimes, when my wandering gaze passes over my right forearm, I give a start. “Oh right,” says I. “I have a cochlea tattoo.” I take a few seconds to admire and reflect on the small symbol and then move on. The inky rendering on my arm is actually that of a koru, a Māori symbol for “life, growth, strength and

One of the greatest challenges for people with hearing loss is being able to participate effectively in a group conversation (also known as a ‘convo’). We usually know what’s being talked about, but there are several challenges that exclude us. Catching what each person says – and when. Because most of us read lips to some degree, by the time

Sometimes we, the people with hearing loss, are our own worst enemy. Not all bad hearing moments are the fault of them – you know, the people who can hear.  We have to take at least some responsibility for less-than-perfect communication, because we have some bad habits which trip us up time after time. What Was I thinking? We ask

The Hearing Husband and I just returned from a two-week trip to Scandinavia, namely Denmark, Sweden and Finland, and we’re suffering from a bit of jet lag. I had been invited to speak about living with hearing loss by several groups of consumers, as well as a hearing aid manufacturer, GN Hearing in Copenhagen. Since talking about hearing loss is

I am traveling in Scandinavia this week, doing hearing loss presentations in Copenhagen, Stockholm and Vaasa.  Meeting other people with hearing loss is always fun and rewarding, because it always makes me better at something I do – living with hearing loss. New friends teach me learn new tips, make me realize I have some lingering bad habits, and discover

For those of you who are new to hearing loss – welcome! Not that we’re happy you have hearing problems, but you’ve joined an unofficial and very large club of like-minded, or should I say like-hearing, people. One thing that you have may have found to be a challenge with your hearing loss, is the kitchen and cooking. I’ve pulled together