DEAFness and knitting...

Everyone knows I'm quite deaf, but not often that combines so neatly with that other little interest of mine: I LOL when I read this on the "hard of hearing UK" mailing list,

Oh I love live subtitles! On BBC1 10 o'clock news just now, Huw Edwards apparently said, "Right now, Mr Cameron and his wife are over in the Palace of Westminster knitting parliamentary colleagues." :D (OK, so maybe Huw Edwards actually said meeting, but I prefer to believe the subtitles.)

mailto:clare%40catspaw.plus.com

Bob's House

I did BSL level 1 several years ago, which is the equivalent of how to get by on holiday in Deaf world, eg "Hi, what's your name?" and "where's the loo?". I started level 2, but you really have to be part of Deaf (with a capital D) culture to get anywhere - like learning any foreign language - and, despite crap hearing, I'm very much part of the hearing world. But anyway, I think this ad is great.

How ironic is it, then, that Pepsi's other ads during the American Superbowl didn't have subtitles? Bit of a mixed message there, methinks.

The 'Mutton Jeff Midwife', has a certain ring, but it's a serious business, this gradual hearing loss of mine: I went for a review of my hearing at the audiology department - us 'hearing impaired' can have a repeat 'pure tone' hearing test every 3 years or so, courtesy of the NHS. It involves having a pair of headphones stuck on your head and having the audiologist fire notes into one ear or the other and you having to press a button when you can hear them. The tones can be very faint - and I start imagining noises are happening even when they're not! I already knew that my high frequencies were shot to pieces - but now they are just about ready to fall off the bottom of the scale. This means I can't hear the consonants of speech, as 'p', 't', 's', 'sh', 'k and 'g'' are all in the high frequencies. Most people sound like they are mumbling. And children are just impossible to interpret. I work out a lot of what people are saying from context - my lipreading skills leave much to be desired. I can sometimes get a conversation hilariously wrong: like when a doc said to me that "we'll wait and see" and I responded "No, nothing wrong with her pee"...

It helps if you attract my attention first before speaking to me, so I can pay attention!

This is the audiogram for my Right ear: Anything between 0 - 25 dB is considered to be Normal Hearing (above that dashed line). Then:
26 - 40 dB Mild Hearing Loss
41 - 55 dB Moderate Hearing Loss
56 - 70 dB Moderately Severe Hearing Loss
71 - 90 dB Severe Hearing Loss
>91 dB Profound Hearing Loss

So I have normal hearing in the Low Frequencies, but a severe to profound loss in the high frequencies, commonly known as a 'ski-slope' loss. As my audiologist said - there comes a point when hearing aids aren't much help as they can only amplify the hearing you have. No wonder my speech discrimination isn't much cop - even WITH my hearing aids, I'll have problems deciphering some words because so many of the consonants are missing - "00 u unneran?"

And that is my Left ear.

The 'speech banana' and the pictures show the sounds I can hear to the left of the line, and all the sounds I can't hear to the right of the line. I can hear jackhammers, crows, dogs barking, pianos, bass lines. I can't hear folk whispering, clocks ticking, high pitched alarms and bleeps, crickets chirping and birds singing - often not even with my HAs IN! This has implications for work: I can hear Fetal heart tones fine - and take blood pressures OK - though I have to take my hearing aids out to use a stethoscope which is a pain in the butt. I can't hear the new alarms from the rooms on Delivery Suite - they are very high pitched. This means I rely on others to tell me when a woman I'm caring for pushes her call bell when I'm out of the room. And I wonder what's going on when everyone rushes to answer the emergency buzzer. This is NOT ideal. Phone calls are variable: for some reason, '2' and '3' sound exactly alike when spoken over the phone. This makes taking down phone numbers and the like problematic. Sound quality varies - I'm OK if the line is clear and the person's voice is distinct. But I'm useless if they are quiet or on a mobile with a poor reception. I can use the phone with my hearing aids in, but I strain, so I prefer to take one out and jam the earpiece against my earlobe and ask the other person to shout at me. Anyway I'm off to 'Soundbase' in Exeter next Wednesday to see what sort of 'Assistive Listening Devices' I can get hold of to help me out which I guess I should have done way before now, but I'm good at procrastinating. I am fortunate to work in a Team with very supportive colleagues - everyone is aware of my hearing loss (well - it's not something that can be hidden, even though it's not particularly visible - the constant use of 'whaaaaaaat?' is a bit of a giveaway).

I guess what's got me so preoccupied with all this is that there has been a definite deterioration since my last hearing test - and I'm YOUNG to have this happen. What will I be like when I'm 60? I'll cross my fingers that the technology available will keep pace with my hearing loss, and try and protect the hearing I have left.

I have digital behind-the-ear aids - and the one good thing that came out of yesterday was that I was given a new pair - rounded and a dark grey colour called 'granite' - no more pink slugs for me! I like them. Thanks to Mary (Quite Contrary) who has the most gorgeous purpley blue HAs (and got them on the NHS) for the inspiration: As a result of seeing hers I asked for a different colour. I was told that they do do different colours but that these are for children and more expensive. (So is glitter in the clear ear moulds for children, but I got that!). But the 'granite' pair comes at no extra cost so I got those. There's an amusing (and so true) response to an article on getting used to hearing aids - see Amanda Kvaslvig's letter: "Follow up of people fitted with hearing aids" BMJ 2002; 325:1304.

As a result of the new aids, I nearly jumped out of my skin when someone texted me the other day. The sound was so loud!

As you all may know, I'm mutton jeff.
A joke I gleaned from the UKHPL mailing list I lurk on:

patient -- "Doctor, doctor, I think I'm going deaf."
doctor -- "What are the symptoms?"
patient -- "They're a small yellow family from America, but what's that
got to do with my hearing??"

tee hee.

Favourite word being "Wha...?"

Helen Keller, a deaf and blind writer and lecturer, once said: “Blindness separates us from things but deafness separates us from people”.

Am I ‘hard of hearing’, ‘hearing impaired’, ‘mutton jeff’ or just a little bit deaf with a small D? Certainly not deaf enough to be Deaf, as in Deaf Culture. which I’ve learnt a bit about since acquiring a pair of hearing aids. I've the utmost respect for Deaf people, having experienced just a little of what they have had to endure for all their lives.

It’s been said that a person experiencing hearing loss will not do anything about it for an average of 10 years, it happens so gradually. That loss will be noticed by friends and family much sooner! I've been losing hearing (how careless) since I was 30ish, but didn't really notice until I was mid 30's when I found I was struggling in lectures when I was training to be a midwife. I went to the University Occupational Health Nurse and had my ears syringed but she said they were remarkably clear of wax and of course it made no difference to my hearing problems. It took me a few more years to get around to getting a referral to the audiology department from my GP. Mostly because I couldn’t hear the telly no matter how loud I turned it up. I was REALLY shocked when they said I would benefit from wearing hearing aids. It was a blow to my self image – and everyone knows hearing aids are just so untrendy – ugly, pink, sluglike and yuk. Theyr’e supposed to be flesh tone, but I don’t know anyone who has flesh toned like that. Where are the purple, polkadot, jewel encrusted ones, ay? I’d decorate them with nail varnish but I think I’d be in BIG trouble from the NHS dept. should I need to exchange them.

OK, so why not get those neat 'in the ear' things that can't be seen - I did have one once (bought privately at huge expense) for vanity reasons. Several reasons: 1)It gets blocked up with wax and goes wrong much quicker,
2) the NHS don't do them and 3) it's actually a boon if people see your hearing aids and realise you DO have a hearing problem, not just attention deficit disorder.
Although it's amazing how people don't see such things. I had a tooth abcess couple of weeks back - and the left side of my face swelled to twice its normal size. Interestingly people's eyes would slide away from my very obvious deformity. When I went to the Casualty to try and get some antibiotics, the nurse asked me "What for?"!

I got given one hearing aid for my 40th birthday but not much information - it took a great deal of getting used to. Having a plug of something in your ear feels much like you would imagine – but large vents helped and gradually I adjusted and my brain adapted. Thank god for the internet, where I learnt most of what I wanted to know. I can remember a lot of turning this hearing aid on and off with incredulity – playing ‘now you hear it, now you don’t’ games with myself. I can’t hear crickets without my HAs. I also can’t hear bird songs or telephones from another room, or highpitched alarms. Speech is the worst – expecially children. Everyone sounds like they’re mumbling without my hearing aids in. Now I have 2, which is better for working out where sounds come from, and makes sense when hearing loss is same in each ear. I’ve had them for over 8 years, and wouldn’t be without them. I even forget they’re in. They are not a panacea of all ills, though – I can’t use them with digital phones as they whistle and feedback. And even though these new digital ones from the wonderful NHS have a directional microphone, I still find it difficult to hear what people are saying when there’s any kind of background noise. It would be great to be able to hear properly in the pub. And I'm not brilliant at lip reading, though I hear better in daylight, so I must do a bit. Communicating in noisy environments is tiring and I’m likely to float off into a daydream after missing the joke for the umpteenth time, which doesn’t endear me to people, who think I’m dreamy, aloof, stupid or just antisocial.
Hearing loss is invisible and not something which attracts much sympathy. I get impatient with myself when I have to ask folk to repeat themselves for the second or fifth time. Even DH gives up and says “It doesn’t matter, not important” which is guaranteed to make me furious.
And being mutton jeff does not equate with mental impairment. No.

I've been told my hearing loss is typical of yer average 80yr old - a ski slope line on the audiogram, with normal hearing in the low frequencies and moderate to severe loss of high frequencies. Noone has been able to tell me why I have hearing loss. I reckon it’s because of NOISE. I’ve been to some loud concerts in my time, and I’ve ridden around on motorbikes for a good 15 years (including a couple of weeks on a 400/4 with an exhaust needing replacing). Lots of rock and roll casualties out there… see the rollcall of honour here

Work was OK - though I notice they (the local hospital) don't have loop systems anywhere but in the audiology dept. They also have intercom systems to access buildings which rely completely on hearing! Having a hearing loss hasn't made that much difference apart from having to take my HA out every time I want to use a stethoscope (I've lost at least one HA because of this). I have got into a spot of bother when I've been on call and haven't heard my pager go off, OR the phone (which has a loudspeaker in the bedroom) at night. I rely on DH to be an alarm and wake me up - but he's a sound sleeper too!

I’ll be surprised if people actually bother to read through this self indulgent rambling to the end. But that’s the good thing about blogging, ay?