July 13, 2015

So Many People Struggle to Hear

July 13, 2015

Here comes supper!

Today was rather productive and busy.  I was up early for my allergy shots.  Some day I hope to have a consistent sleep pattern worked out, but I seem to almost always stay up too late.  I did sleep another hour this morning, after I had been up for a while. 

On the way to the office, I tried to run a couple of errands, but neither was productive.  Once I got to work, I paid a couple of bills.  Ron needed to go to the bank so I had him make a deposit for me.  While he was gone, it got very busy - always seems to happen that way.  One of the customers is a friend of Ron's and Ron has talked to him about my hearing situation.  This man wears a hearing aid and he said lately it is just not doing the job for him.  He had several questions for me about my Cochlear implant.

A little hard to see, but both parent woodpeckers

 on near the hole with food.

When a person suffers from hearing loss, the hearing rarely remains stable in the years to come.  It takes frequent testing, adjusting, and patient work by the audiologist to see that the patient is hearing their best.  Before I went deaf, I wore a hearing aid in one ear for 8 years.  I would have to go back to have adjustments made or repairs made.  Today's hearing aids can usually be adjusted and reprogrammed, allowing the patient to have changes made without having to buy new hearing aids.  They are very expensive.

What this man said is so common.  The changes are gradual and suddenly, you realized you just can't hear any longer, or you can't understand what is being said.  When Ron tells someone about my hearing situation, they often want to come in and talk to me about it if they also have a degree of hearing loss.  They want to be assured that there is still something out there that may be able to help them if their hearing continues to get worse in the years to come. 

Waiting turns to deliver food.

Like the man I talked to at the reception Saturday afternoon.  His type of loss was different from mine and the solution for him is different than mine, but there are so many things now that can help that even if a person went several years ago to be checked, they should try again.  We are an aging population at all times, but my generation (I am 69), grew up on loud music.  I didn't listen to rock music of go to events with loud bands, since my choice was mostly classical music, but I was in a symphonic band, surrounded by instruments.  Maybe that was a factor.  Maybe not.  I think a lot of mine was hereditary, mostly from my dad's mother.

It really doesn't matter why you have a hearing loss; what matters is what you are doing about it now.  This man I talked to said adapting to his hearing aids in the beginning was very hard, but he kept trying.  I found that those sessions at the audiologist's office were very stressful.  You are listening to noises being played into you ear and you are to tell the tester if they sound normal, have an echo, sound tinny, or what.  There were times I just had to tell them that we would have to continue another day.  I was at the end of my patience.

Also it does help to talk to others and find that the problems are very common to others.  I find that I am not the only one who can't hear music as it used to sound. I am not the only one who is sometimes overwhelmed with the noises from a loud group of people - especially young children with high pitched voices.

Back to my day at the office.  Ron was out another time or two during the day.  He had a lot of items to work on that customers had brought in for repairs, etc.  During the afternoon I briefly sewed.  I tried one block of a new pattern but am not sure how much I will try to do with it.  I cut some pieces for the string pieced quilt blocks, but did not sew any.  Later in the afternoon after the mail came I prepared a bank deposit and then took it to the bank.

From there I went to the church to deliver something to a friend that my daughter-in-law had sent home with me yesterday.  At that time I noticed I did not have my phone with me so I went back to the office to pick it up and leave the bank bag.  I picked up some supper on my way home and read while I ate.  Ron was waiting for a salesman to arrive and they were going to do supper together.

I spent 30 minutes working in the yard, pulling a few weeds, watering hanging baskets, filling ponds and fountains, cleaning windows so I could take photos through them and filling bird feeders.  Once back in the house I got a few photos of the Golden-Fronted Woodpeckers taking food to their nest.

Later in the evening, I did some sewing of the blocks I started a day or two ago.  I got about 5 more blocks made and have about that many more cut out.