Better Hearing Consumer

I have a small bone to pick with people who can hear well. It’s not that I begrudge them their hearing—but do they have to be so show-offy about it? These people let you know when they hear a pin drop. They can understand what’s being said way over there. They can understand speech in noisy situations—on a roller coaster, for example. And that’s

It’s probably not an easy thing to learn that your two year-old daughter has permanent hearing loss. You worry, because she is also a sensitive child for whom the sky will be always bluer and the grass always greener than for some other people. That’s how my father, a few years ago, described my mother’s discovery that my willful behavior

Have you ever been tossed on the stormy seas of hearing loss nomenclature? That’s the term or terms applied to someone or something, and in the hearing loss and deaf worlds it’s what you’re called if you have it, if you are it, if you have some of it, or if you ain’t got none of it. Deaf. Deafened. A

I am not usually a fan of alphabet lists. You know the kind – M.O.T.H.E.R is spelled out starting with M is for the Milk you made me drink, O is for the Overcoat that was ugly but you said who-cares-it-will-keep-you-warm …and so on. But on a long cross-country flight, I was thinking about blog topics and started doodling with

People with hearing loss bluff.  It’s what we do, a basic fact of our lives. We pretend to understand what’s being said and what new direction the conversation is heading (if we got it in the first place), whereas in reality we have lost the connection and so we fake it. It’s not that we want to bluff.  Exactly the

They say that moving into a new house is high on the stress list—packing, physical exertion, excitement about a new place and yearning for the old, figuring out which way the cupboard doors open or what light a switch turns on, etc. And then there’s getting used to all those the new house noises. A person with hearing loss needs time

 This week, my guest writer Kathi Mestayer muses on how people with hearing loss depend on two types of information in a conversation. Whew! Listening Skills: The Eyes Have It! by Kathi Mestayer I used to think of hearing as being about sound, volume, clarity, etc. And it surely is. But it is also about the other signals we use

Recently several articles on what NOT to say to deaf people have been floating on Facebook. I understand the writers’ exasperation, having been on the receiving end of many of the comments. Although I’m no longer insulted by most of them, once in a while I have to grab my chin to keep my jaw from dropping to the floor.

This has been quite a summer – lots of sun and Pity Party-ing with the three-headed monster of tinnitus, hyperacusis and breaking in new hearing aids. But to add some perspective – it could always be worse. And it helps to remember that, whatever our issues, we’re always in the company of millions of people living and dealing with similar challenges.

While I’m on vacation, I thought you might enjoy this favorite post from 2015.     Note:  Person with hearing loss = hard of hearing person = HoH   She did it again—she started talking to me from another room.  His baseball cap shades his eyes, and I always have to ask him to take it off.   People with