Wednesday, December 3, 2003

Hearing during the holidays

The holidays are times when families and friends get together. Communicating with one anther easily is a luxury most of us take for granted.

Many persons have different degrees of difficulty in understanding the speech of another person. When this other person is someone you really want to connect with but can not because of hearing loss a level of frustration exists. Even anger will be experienced.

Ordinarily when a person who has hearing difficulty asks his or her spouse to repeat what was said the spouse will naturally raise the volume of their voice. This quite often sounds like the person is angry which causes anger in the hearing-impaired spouse. It can be a vicious cycle leading to hurt feelings, resentments and isolation. Isolation occurs when the person with hearing loss begins to withdraw from social occasions because he does not want to have to guess what people are saying or appear stupid because they have to keep asking what it was someone said.

There is research indicating a loss of hearing can negatively impact a person’s physical health because a withdrawn person is not as physically active as one who stays socially active.

Seventy-five percent of people who do not wear hearing aids but have hearing loss are under retirement age. I have seen people in my practice who are quite surprised and elated when they are properly fit with hearing aids. They seem to recognize immediately that now there will be less of a struggle in their lives. Wearing hearing aids solves many communication problems and can give a person a sense of well being, a feeling of connection.

Hearing aids do not give a person perfectly normal hearing but often the results are very satisfactory. A young man hearing better at business meetings, a middle-age woman understanding the preacher for the first time in a long while, or a grandfather listening to his grandson telling him about some adventure are all things most of us take for granted. So if you know someone with hearing loss be sure to speak clearly while facing them.

There are many ways to improve communication and as of yet there is nothing better than a good pair of hearing instruments. Holidays are too important not to hear well.

— Andrew Waits

clinical audiologist

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