Hearing Loss Help  

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

For some people, the tinnitus they hear all day long—every day—makes it hard to cope with life. Eddy is one such person. Now totally deaf and almost blind, she writes, “The noises in my head almost drive me nuts. They change constantly. I know, that people could go nuts with what I am going through. I am not surprised if some end up committing suicide or in a mental hospital.”

In spite of her horrible tinnitus, Eddy is a poet and finds relief in her poetry. Her poem “From Music to the Sound of Hell” gives a bit of insight into what her bad tinnitus really is like.

From Music to the Sound of Hell

Once—my voice rang out with joyful glee,
Others used to sing with me.
Once—I played accordion, mouth organ, and mandolin;
I even played the organ, and the violin.
My ears were very sensitive:
To them it was offensive—
To be subjected to the sound
The clock beside my bed made—and I found—
To get some rest
It would be best
To hide it under a hat;
Henceforth, I did just that.

Now—times have changed;
My hearing is deranged,
I cannot sing,
No instrument will bring—
The music I intend to send.
No lovely tune I hear,
Loud noise I have to bear
In both my ears and head
During days- and nights in bed,
Which never gives me peace.
I do not find release
From humming, strumming, banging, clanging,
Slapping, clapping, hissing, sizzling, howling, growling,
Orchestrated sounds.
There are no bounds—no limits set—
To my regret
For this destructive torture.

No one understands my pain.
My only wish is—to stay sane.
I learned to hide what bothers me,
Therefore, not a one can see
The devastating state I am in;
The horrible calamity
That frightfully engulfs me,
Keeps petrified me in my chair
In agony, and deep despair—
Not knowing what’s in store for me,
Praying: “Please God, let this be
The last of these unbearable attacks.
I do not mind—if I can’t hear,
Therefore, I have to bear
Cruel disrespect from all,
Just save me from the fall
Into this hellish nightmare.”

My body is deprived of sleep
That’s restful, long and deep.
More often than I care—
I doze off in my chair,
Don’t go to bed at all,
Why bother? I don’t fall
Asleep there anyway,
Night seems like day.
The discord music in my head
Never stops—Instead—
It’s getting worse each day.
I wish there were a way
To end this dreadful agony.

Edeltraut L. Scheffler-Plath.

(c) 1999. (Used by permission)

Edeltraut (Eddy as she likes to be called) has written a book of poems. If you like her unique brand of poetry, you might be interested in getting her book 101+ Poems from the Heart. It will tug at your heartstrings.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A hard of hearing lady wrote:

I have always been a person that has to have my “space” and feel personally violated if people stand too close (any closer than arm’s distance). I will literally get very uncomfortable, start sweating, panicky, if it is not a situation that I can remedy quickly. I have always thought that I was just an oddball who valued and guarded my “personal space”. A few months ago, I was talking to my audiologist about this and she said this is a very common trait among deaf and hard of hearing people. Have you ever experienced this? If this is a common trait, what is the mind’s reasoning behind it—a defense mechanism, or what?

The amount of personal space you want/need is a individual matter, so each of us may have a different idea as to the “right” amount of personal space we want. For example, one study showed that people who live in the wide open spaces want more personal space than those who live crowded together in downtown New York. This has nothing to do with hearing loss.

However, when you lose your hearing, your ideal personal space both expands and contracts at the same time. Let me explain this apparent oxymoron.

When we lose our hearing, it is true that we generally want more personal space, especially in possibly “threatening” situations. This is because we cannot adequately “hear” the intentions of those around us. Since we can’t trust our ears for early warning signals, our eyes have to take over this job, and our eyes can’t see in all directions at once. Thus, we want people to stay further away so we have more visual warning if they begin to make any “threatening” moves towards us.

For example, at night walking down a street, I don’t want anyone close behind me because they are out of my field of view and I can’t hear them. Thus, in such situations we want a lot more personal space than a person with normal hearing. That’s one side of the story.

The other side of the story is quite different. When we are conversing (and do not feel threatened), we often actually want less personal space so we can hear and speechread people better.

For example, one time I was out in the middle of the prairies (all the personal space in the world), but I still needed to get almost within arms length of the hearing person I was trying to talk with in order to hear her. It was obvious to me that I was invading her personal space, but I needed to be that close in order to hear her. Our needs for personal space in this situation were very different.

In contrast, another time I was talking to a hard of hearing lady in an almost empty arena. We were standing almost nose-to-nose in the middle of the arena having a good conversation. We didn’t feel like we were invading each other’s personal space. You see, our conversational personal space shrinks to fit our hearing losses.

Now that I am getting older I’m having a problem. My ears say I need less personal space—people need to be close in order for me to hear them. At the same time, my eyes say I need more personal space as they can’t focus that close to effectively speechread any more!

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

One of the things I have wished for, especially in emergency situations, was a radio that would display the text as well as the audio, so I could read the words that my poor ears miss—much as I do with captioning on the TV. You don’t have to miss many key words before you don’t understand what is really happening.

The good news is that captioned radio is coming—maybe even before the end of this year!

“A radio with closed captions, allowing hard of hearing listeners to ‘see’ radio shows is good news for millions of people with hearing loss, and one of the best new gadgets of the year, according to the BBC. The captions are shown on a screen on the receiver and will require the user to subscribe to a closed captioning service.”

According to an article in PC Magazine (01.06.08), “The systems works a lot like close captioning does for television. The company will piggy-back a data stream on the standard audio signal. The text can then be read on radios fitted with a display. The system will only work with digital broadcasts. Currently more than 1,500 radio stations are currently broadcasting in HD Radio in the United States.”

The new radio is still in the development stage. But a spokesman for Harris Broadcast, a party to the project, told the Washington Times newspaper in Washington, D.C. recently that a radio with closed captioning capability may be in production by the end of 2008.

Now you know what you want for Christmas this year!

 by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A man wrote:

I’m curious about some increased ringing in my ears and a peculiar off again, on again, sensation that is quite distressing, namely when I am at work, if I open a map for instance (I work with maps all day), just the process of opening the maps, can give me a harsh metallic tinny noise in my ears, particularly my right ear. A similar feeling occurs when I lay a pen down on a glass surface or even sometimes when I am typing on the keyboard. This might go on for a day with my ears feeling stopped up somewhat, and then it will disappear and the next day I will be fine.

What you are describing sounds like recruitment kicking in. Recruitment is a by-product of sensorineural hearing loss, and makes you perceive normal sounds are louder (harsher) than normal. Since you have a high frequency hearing loss (to whatever degree), because of recruitment, you now perceive the high-frequency component of the sounds the maps make, the high-frequency component of the sound of the pen clinking on glass and also the high-frequency component of the keyboard clicks, or your fingernails on the keyboard—not at their normal level—but as much louder than normal. Thus, they sound harsh. If you have severe recruitment, they can sound so loud that they will hurt.

When your ears are feeling stopped up, you are experiencing additional hearing loss—and with the extra hearing loss, your recruitment would be kicking in worse, hence the annoying component to everyday sounds.

You need to try and figure out what is causing the stopped-up feeling by reviewing the sounds you exposed your ears to the previous day. No doubt, you are listening to something louder/longer than your ears like.

The man then asked, “Do you think it is safe to continue to wear earbuds while listening to audio books on my iPod for an hour or so a day? Are the deep in the ear ones a better choice because the volume doesn’t have to be turned up as loud?”

It doesn’t really matter what kind of earphones or earbuds you use with your iPod—the key is to keep the volume at a comfortable level. Those deep in the ear ones require less volume—that is true—but only because they are closer to the eardrum. In actual fact they vibrate your eardrums just as much as any other earbuds IF you set the volume so that what you hear sounds to you to be at the same level.

Note: you will not hurt your ears if you listen to your iPod (no matter what kind of earbuds you use) at approximately the same level as you hear people around you talking—so that is a good rule of thumb to follow.

 by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A mother wrote:

My beautiful daughter was born with impaired hearing, and the doctors said she would lose her hearing as she got older. She is now in her forties. With her hearing aid, she hears noises, but cannot understand speech because of the background noise she picks up. Is there a way to soften the background noise so she can hear conversations?

Your daughter is not alone. Did you know that this is the most common complaint people have about hearing aids—that they pick up so much noise you can’t understand speech?

Compounding this problem for your daughter is the fact she only has one ear—and you need two ears in order for your brain to help filter out noise.

Fancy new hearing aids claim (don’t believe everything you read) that they can filter out noise from speech (and some do a reasonable job in certain situations), but no hearing aids do the kind of job normally-hearing ears do.

There is one main secret to hearing speech in noise, and that is to get the microphone right up to the speaker’s lips so his/her voice is much louder than the surrounding noise. In order to do this you either have to have the person talk right into the hearing aid’s microphone (not practical at all), or you need to use an assistive device either in combination with the hearing aid or by itself.

For noisy situations, my choice is a PockeTalker with a super-directional microphone when standing or moving around (such as at a party or convention), or a lapel microphone if seated near the person such as in a car or restaurant.

If your daughter’s hearing aid has a t-coil in it (and all hearing aids should have t-coils), then she can switch to the t-coil setting. This turns the microphone off so it can’t pick up any noise, and at the same time turns on the t-coil. Then she wears a neckloop or Music Link plugged into the PockeTalker. She will hear via the t-coil in her hearing aid via the PockeTalker and neckloop.

These assistive devices aren’t expensive like hearing aids are—but they do cost a bit of money. For example, the PockeTalker is about $140.00, the neckloop or Music Link is around $50.00, the lapel microphone is about $70.00 and the super-directional microphone is about $120.00.

When it gets noisy, if I want to hear a person I have basically three choices. I either:

a. Ask them to move with me to a quieter location (if possible).

b. Speechread them and forget about trying to hear.

c. Whip out my PockeTalker and appropriate microphone and hear them that way.

You can learn more about the PockeTalker here.

The features, accessories and prices for the PockeTalker and the above two microphones are illustrated here.