Hello all,

You may wonder why would I want to blog about the hearing loss? Me? A Deaf professional woman, who is a strong advocate for American Sign Language?

Let me explain this…

I was born with a congenital bilateral severe-to-profound sensorineural hearing loss. Etiology of hearing loss was unknown. I was diagnosed around 6 to 9 months old in mid 1960’s (which was quite early in that time!), and was fitted with hearing aids at age of 2-3 years old. Oh, I remember those two big body aids with a body harness (“the bra”). These hearing aids were analog type from Zenith. It comes with “ear plugs” with customized ear molds. I remember nibbling on these wires, and luckily, I didn’t get electrocuted! Ha! Ha!

When I was little, my audiogram showed that I had a severe-to-profound hearing loss on both of my ears. I was able to pick up some speech and environmental sounds with my analog hearing aids. So basically, it benefited me. I was able to understand speech patterns with lipreading.

I started wearing B-T-E (behind the ear) hearing aids when I was a preteen, until few years later, I stopped wearing a hearing aid for my right ear because it was not helping me. It was discovered that my right ear has 120 dB loss. I continued wearing them for my left ear which has about 90-95 dB loss. Of course, living with the hearing family enabled me to wear hearing aids during my waking hours every single day. I was able to use telephone talking with my mom.

Until the time when I enrolled at Gallaudet University. I had a terrible feedback with my earmold. Do you remember the *eee* sound which annoyed everyone around me? I kept on pushing my earmold into my ear canal, but it didn’t work for a while. So, I decided to put away my left hearing aid. With this decision, I was able to immerse American Sign Language without any interference of sounds. It helped me to be fluent in ASL. During college, I had a few bouts of mononucleosis which slightly affected my hearing.

After graduating Gallaudet, I decided to purchase a new digital hearing aid. Wow, that was a big difference! Digital hearing aids allows me to pick up so many sounds at the same time and it was hard for me to discriminate the differences between environmental and speech sounds. Especially they do pick up electronic static humming from computers, and it was a constant humming which was extremely annoying. I had to turn it off while I was working on a computer. When I was driving my car, I was able to hear the “whoosh” sounds and it was loud enough to compete with the speech sounds from the radio or from a person. I decided to turn my hearing aid off while I was driving.

After purchasing three different digital hearing aids since 1990’s. I sometimes wish I could have my analog hearing aids back. I shared my concerns with my audiologist, and I got an emphatic responses such as “It was a very common complaint, Amy.” Sigh.

One year and a half ago, I purchased Oticon Sumo DM which was supposed to be a very powerful one. I wore it and I really liked it very much. I even purchased a ‘boot’ that allows me to connect to the iPad. The sounds were great.

But…

Few weeks later after trying Sumo DM, the sounds becomes garbled and muffled. I cursed at my hearing aid thinking, “Damn digital!”, and the environmental sounds becomes more prevalent.

I decided to take another audiogram test several months ago. I discovered that my ‘better’ ear went down to 110-120 dB level from 90-95 dB.

That’s 20 to 30 dB loss, and that is a HUGE difference. I just stopped wearing my digital hearing aid.

Until…

Two days ago, I put them on because I admit that I do miss hearing sounds. Missing hearing sounds does not make me as an audist or a ‘hearie’. It is part of me for who I am while I was growing up. I kinda miss hearing speech sounds from TV with captions. I was able to distinguish the differences between female and male speech patterns with my hearing aid. Lately, I was imagining the sounds in my head, and it is becoming monotonous to me. I need a variety.

I turned my hearing aid on my left ear. I hear sounds when I did some self-test by saying, “Hello, Hello”. I can hear my voice. Few minutes later, my “Hellos” becomes muffled.

I turned on the TV set. I listened the speech patterns while reading captions. It is not sharp or crisp as it used be. Everything so muffled and distorted. I turned up the sound from the TV set, and it became worse.

I turned up the volume from my hearing aid, and the sounds faded out quite quickly.

I took it off from my left ear.

Now…

I do know what it feels like to lose some hearing.

I am 43 years old, and I remembered my father having some hearing problems around that age. He usually turned TV sound up so loud which I complained to him when I was younger.

I checked the site and I learned about presbycusis, also known as age-related hearing loss. It usually happened at age 30-40 especially around the high frequency range. It hits harder for elderly adults.

News flash. Deaf people can experience presbycusis too! I noticed several of my Deaf friends who used wearing hearing aids are currently experiencing progressive loss in their 40’s.

I miss hearing *some* sounds that I used to have.

To learn more about Presbycusis, click here.

Best,
Amy Cohen Efron