| Hearing Aid Article (updated Frequently)
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| Coping With Hearing Loss |
| By: Connie Briscoe |
Oddly enough, I've come to think that losing my hearing was one
of the best things that ever happened to me, as it led to the
publication of my first novel. But it took a while for me to
accept that I was losing my hearing and needed help.
I believe that no matter how tough things get, you can make them
better. I have my parents to thank for that. They never allowed
me to think that I couldn't accomplish something because of my
hearing loss. One of my mother's favorite sayings when I
expressed doubt that I could do something was, "Yes, you can."
I was born with a mild hearing loss but began to lose more of my
hearing when I was a senior in college. One day while sitting in
my college dormitory room reading, I noticed my roommate get up
from her bed, go to the princess telephone in our room, pick it
up and start talking. None of that would have seemed strange,
except for one thing: I never heard the telephone ring! I
wondered why I couldn't hear a phone that I could hear just the
day before. But I was too baffled--and embarrassed--to say
anything to my roommate or to anyone else.
Late-deafened people can always remember the moments when they
first stopped being able to hear the important things in life
like telephones and doorbells ringing, people talking in the
next room, or the television. It's sort of like remembering
where you were when you learned that President Kennedy had been
shot or when you learned about the terror attack at the World
Trade Center.
Unbeknown to me at the time, that was only the beginning of my
downward spiral, as my hearing grew progressively worse. But I
was young and still vain enough not to want to wear a hearing
aid. I struggled through college by sitting up front in the
classroom, straining to read lips and asking people to speak up,
sometimes again and again.
By the time I entered graduate school, I could no longer put off
getting a hearing aid. By that time, even sitting in front of
the classroom wasn't helping much. I was still vain enough to
wait a few months while I let my hair grow out a bit before
taking the plunge but I eventually bought my first hearing aid.
It was a big, clunky thing, but I knew that I would have to be
able to hear if I ever wanted to graduate. Soon, my hair length
didn't matter much, as the hearing aids got smaller and smaller.
They also got better and better at picking up sound. The early
aids did little more than make sounds louder evenly across the
board. That doesn't work for those of us with nerve deafness, as
we may have more hearing loss in the higher frequencies than in
the lower frequencies. The newer digital and programmable
hearing aids go a long way toward improving on that. They can be
set to match different types of hearing loss, so you can, say,
increase a particular high frequency more than the lower ones.
Once I got my hearing aid and was able to hear again, I could
focus on other things that were important to me--like my
education, my career and writing that first novel! I didn't
realize it then, but that first hearing aid actually freed me to
go on to bigger and better things.
I had long dreamed of writing a novel, but like others kept
putting it off. As I began to lose more and more of my hearing,
it was a chore just to keep up at work, let alone doing much
else. Then once I got the hearing aid, I no longer had to worry
about a lot of the things I did before, and I began to think
that writing a novel would be the perfect hobby for me. Anyone
can write regardless of whether they can hear. I was also
determined to prove that losing my hearing would not hold me
back.
My first novel was published in 1994 and my fifth in the summer
of 2005. Writing turned out to be much more than a hobby, as
I've been writing full-time for more than 10 years. I'm now hard
at work on my first nonfiction work, a photo-essay book to be
published by Bulfinch, a division of Time Warner Books, in 2007.
I honestly believe that I would never have sat down at the
computer and banged out that first novel if I hadn't lost so
much of my hearing. Instead, I'd probably still be an editor
somewhere and still dreaming about someday becoming a novelist.
That's why I sometimes think that losing my hearing was one of
the best things that ever happened to me.
About the author:
Connie Briscoe is a New York Times best-selling author of
five novels. Her latest novel is entitled Can't Get
Enough, published by Doubleday. She is currently at work on
a photo-essay book to be published by Bulfinch Press, a division
of Time-Warner Boos, in early 2007. www.hearingaidinformer.c
om)
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| Keywords: 'hearing impairment' hearing aid, i was, hearing, me, was, that losing my, losing my hearing, my hearing, 'hearing impairment', able to hear |
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