Thread for those of us that are deaf/hard of hearing?

[flamingo40]

I've looked through the health topics and can't find any particular areas for those of us who are deaf or hard of hearing to turn to if we are after advice or just fancy a chat with people who are in the same situation?
I guess I'm asking firstly if I'm missing something or secondly if there isn't an area we can go to would this be something Mumsnet would think about adding?

Having been hard of hearing for years and now a permanent hearing aid wearer I'd love you get help and advice and talk about experiences to other people

I have been struggling at work recently
I work on the phone.
they got a t link headset for me. But half the time it doesn't go on the t link thing and I've no idea why it does sometimes and doesn't sometimes or how it works.
i don't know if it's cos there's more people in our office closer together and it's busy so everyone's on the phone talking at once.
or whether the headset is just rubbish cos even customers have said lately they can hear the person next to me more than me or it's really noisy and lots of background noise.
I know there'll probably be a talk some time soon about how they realise I'm struggling and I don't want it

‘Mild’ hearing loss can actually lead to significant social difficulties for young children, especially if pre-lingual. They learn to speak, they learn to communicate, but everything’s just a bit out of phase and out of time. So the back-and-forth of normal chit-chat gets lost on them.

I grew up like this. I liken my challenges to those with ASD (I have a lot of autistic friends) as like my friends, I need a lot of time to myself after the hard work of group socialising, talking to people at work, not allowing phones and their varying sound quality to defeat me, attempting to screen out background noise etc. It’s knackering!

Also, how pissed off do you get with people who think hearing aids will turn your hearing normal? 😡

@purpleme12 I'm doing BSL lessons over zoom and my instructor speaks and explains everything he's signing.

Boots man was probably not even qualified, just a glorified salesman who’d done an in-house training video.

Go through the NHS; you may have to wait a while but at least all their staff are trained audiologists. And their hearing aids are actually pretty good.

@QuantumWeatherButterfly -thank you so much for taking the trouble to explain .I get it now !

And @ToDuk and @ThomasinaGallico -yes yes .It's exhausting ,I don't want to meet friends anymore it's so difficult to follow the conversation .Every single cafe is too noisy and the roar of traffic (i live in a busy bit of London) is too much .
My partner doesn't like having the subtitles on and though he now normally concedes I did have to explain to him (yet again ) that increasing the volume DOES NOT HELP. And expecting me to hear his comments made from a seat behind me and over a loud TV all the while when I'm straining to make out the plot further demonstrates his lack of understanding .

This is absolutely astounding. My DD has poor vision. Absolutely no one thinks that we shouldn't have worried about getting her glasses! Why on earth would anyone assume that hearing difficulties were any less of an impairment to learning?

@peridito You are very welcome! I'm just so thrilled with them, it's really nice to be enthusiastic about them to people who will care/understand!

I do wish this was a forum open to a wider audience - such compassion, empathy, support and info 👍🏿☘️❤️

@eveoha l couldn’t agree more. It is my favourite thread on MN. Not many people understand what it is like to be hard of hearing unless they have experienced it themselves. We have made our own little supportive community. Who would have realised that there are so many younger people who are hearing impaired?

I find this an invaluable thread. I'm not a prolific poster but I avidly read every post.

I find my hearing loss incredibly isolating and stressful. I feel there's only so many times you can ask for a repeat of what someone has said. My family are not unsupportive but they don't really understand, how can they, they can hear.

I have lost the high notes but my lower notes are more or less fine which makes it very difficult to correct apparently.

Absolutely! To know there's a whole load of other people out there with hearing aids or implants, and varying degrees of loss, that you can find and talk to without people who have "normal" hearing perhaps putting their ableist spin on things... invaluable.

(P.S. Viola player, here!)

@SuziLikeSuziQ that’s great. I also play and teach viola as well as the piano and violin. It’s a lovely, soulful, underestimated instrument, isn’t it?

Thanks to this thread, I checked with my local trust if they offered Bluetooth enabled hearing aids and they do! I'm absolutely thrilled! I've have standard NHS bte aids for years and just assumed they would never give out Bluetooth aids. I've yet to get a reply about how to go about getting them but I'm hopeful. This will make such a difference. I think I've always been of the "get what I'm given without questioning it" frame of mind and part of me feels guilty (NHS falling to bits etc) but there is no way I'd ever be able to afford to buy aids myself.

Also, I completely agree with people saying both how exhausting hearing loss is, which people just don't get and also the assumptions it's all older people. My hearing went in my early 30s (I'm 47 now).

The other day someone at work said to me 'it's selective hearing isn't it'. She wasn't being horrible it was cos I heard something and I don't hear other things. She was being jokey.
I don't hide my hearing aids I have my hair up quite a bit and I'm not bothered who knows but I guess I don't shout about it either.
But the whole jokey thing about selective hearing makes no sense to me anyway cos it's never a case that you're choosing not to hear stuff you don't want to answer anyway

I think the idea of selection comes because with a mild or moderate loss, there are some speech sounds you hear better than others. Google 'speech banana' to see visual examples overlaid on audiograms.

So if someone is using words containing speech sounds in your better hearing range, you're more likely to hear enough to know what they're saying. For example, my hearing gets worse the higher the frequency. So the higher-pitched, quieter sounds are more difficult for me to hear, sounds like th, s, f. I'm more likely confuse these sounds or not hear them at all than lower-pitched ones like v and b.

So I suppose it may look as though I can sometimes hear and sometimes don't.

Or something like that! Hard to explain myself.

I hear people say that so often. Like @SuziLikeSuziQ said it helps to look at the speech banana. It's like people might hear the shape of the word but not all the distinct parts so they kind of estimate. That doesn't mean they can hear everything or that they're being selective if they don't then hear another, maybe less familiar word. Selective is rude because it makes it sound like people just choose to listen when they want to.

Yes exactly it's the implication that you're choosing to listen when you want to. And yet I don't think people are meaning to be rude when they say this but ...!

I've never had anyone say it to me before, although I suppose they may be thinking it! I'm curious that @ToDuk hears people it often - you don't have a hearing loss yourself so is this your pupils? None of my pupils have ever said that someone has said it, that I know of.

Oh that's interesting you've never had anyone say it.
I reckon over my whole life I've had it quite a lot!
I really think people don't realise it comes across as rude though and they're not meaning to be rude

@SuziLikeSuziQ yes - school staff and even a couple of parents! The children wouldn't know, hopefully. Very recently I literally had a dad tell me that his son can hear when his favourite programme comes on so he can't be deaf!

Oh, that selective hearing thing really annoys me! What happens is that your brain gets really, really good at filling in the gaps with things like lip reading (often done unconsciously), contextual guesses and keeping the conversation going to get more information. You often don’t realise that’s what you’re doing, so when these strategies fail and you still don’t understand the conversation, people tell you off for pretending you heard. It isn’t that black and white.

Well, I've only worn hearing aids for about 8 years, so I haven't had that long to hear such comments, by comparison with some. But like I say, they're maybe saying it behind my back.

How long have others had their aids? Having got mine as an adult, people always ask me about why I have them, like there shouldn't be a reason why someone in their 30s suddenly needs them.

Oh okay, so a parent or teacher talking to another teacher. Like I say, I'm sure people say it behind my back, but I was curious about d/Deaf people having it said to their face.

I’m afraid that when I was young and my relatives made comments about older people having selective deafness that I just didn’t question it — it seemed to make sense to someone knowing nothing about hearing. Now I’m old I sadly know the truth!

Funny thing is, our middle aged dog quite suddenly lost most of his hearing. I could see all the signs but for sometime other family members passed it off as “selective”, until it became very apparent.
He is responding very well to hand signals now and I’m quite proud of him. Can also distinguish between left and right hands. Rather fortunate come 5th Nov as he sleeps on quite oblivious.

Re the selective hearing, I must admit that I am selective at times - like when my husband tries to ask a question from 2 rooms away when I'm standing next to a boiling kettle 🙄i can hear that he's talking but not what he's saying. I ignore him on the assumption that if it's important he'll come to find me. I know that isn't what's being referred to BTW, I just get frustrated with people who should know better!

I’ve had hearing aids of one sort or another since I was about 3. So, 50 years, and in that time I’ve gone from bricks on your chest, through analogue BTE, to digital, to Bluetooth. I also had a fairly long period in early adulthood when I didn’t even bother with hearing aids because the analogue ones were so ropey and the aftercare just wasn’t there - and also because I didn’t want to draw attention to my disability. Probably didn’t help my job prospects to be honest.