You May Be One of the Millions with Hearing Loss, BUT YOU’RE UNAWARE OF IT!

Are you saying, “What?” too much? If you say it because the person you’re communicating with is a low talker, ok. That’s a reason. But it’s rare that person after person is a low talker. Instead, you may have difficulty loss.

But I wasn’t amazed. From age 12 to 17, I used to say the transistor radio was surgically attached to my ear, playing Motown and the Beatles and Mamas and Papas constantly with my favorite broadcaster, Philly’s Hy Litt!

Then came later favorite tunes, blasting, because if it wasn’t blasting, it wasn’t worth playing. Later came the boom box, playing it at I-don’t-know what decibels. So all the while, I was slowly damaging my ears. I knew it but didn’t care because the seventies (age, not anything else) were eons away. Just in time. I’m 76 now.

Anyway, I was one of those people, and it wasn’t until I got a new job as a hospital technical trainer in 2001 that I went to an ENT there for hearing aids.

And it wasn’t until my hospital manager, Jennifer, said rudely, “You can’t hear anyway,” that I considered the hearing aids weren’t working anymore.

That was 2007 (I remember crass things like that) and the shelf life for hearing aids: about 5 years, so I was not surprised. 

I futzed around for 2 years with night-and-day, thousands less expensive, OTC (over-the-counter) aids, but they all didn’t discriminate between background noise and conversation.

I had a stroke in 2009, and it wasn’t until a year later that I got new, not-OTC hearing aids once recovery was underway in 2010. But they, too, needed many adjustments to lower the environment sounds from conversational sounds.

On to the studies: NHANES (National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey) show that the likelihood of hearing loss rises steadily with age, from 3 percent among adults 20–29 years of age to 49 percent among adults 60–69 years of age (Agrawal et al., 2008).

Using NHANES data, Agrawal and researchers “estimated that 29 million adults ages 20–69 years in the United States have hearing loss, and Lin and colleagues (Lin et al., 2011) estimated that 30 million people ages 12 and older have bilateral hearing loss and 48 million people have poor hearing in at least one ear.”

And as of July, 2022, more than 1 million cochlear implants have been implanted in the United States alone (Zeng, FG (2022).

https://www.icloud.com/iclouddrive/07a1zbvBr38B2eQZjVs6t13YQ#cochlear-implant-web-pic

A cochlear implant (much more complicated) has many risks, too. From the FDA: 

• Injury to the facial nerve–this nerve goes through the middle ear to give movement to the muscles of the face. It lies close to where the surgeon needs to place the implant, and thus it can be injured during the surgery. An injury can cause a temporary or permanent weakening or full paralysis on the same side of the face as the implant.
• Meningitis–this is an infection of the lining of the surface of the brain. People who have abnormally formed inner ear structures appear to be at greater risk of this rare, but serious complication. 
• Cerebrospinal fluid leakage–the brain is surrounded by fluid that may leak from a hole created in the inner ear or elsewhere from a hole in the covering of the brain as a result of the surgical procedure.
• Perilymph fluid leak–the inner ear or cochlea contains fluid. This fluid can leak through the hole that was created to place the implant.
• Infection of the skin wound.
• Blood or fluid collection at the site of surgery.
• Attacks of dizziness or vertigo.
• Tinnitus, which is a ringing or buzzing sound in the ear.
• Taste disturbances–the nerve that gives taste sensation to the tongue also goes through the middle ear and might be injured during the surgery.
• Numbness around the ear.
• Reparative granuloma–this is the result of localized inflammation that can occur if the body rejects the implant.
• There may be other unforeseen complications that could occur with long term implantation that we cannot now predict.

My conclusion: Hearing aids aren’t perfect, like you won’t hear the way you used to. The best that you can get is improved hearing, and not all the time.

So I wasn’t alone, but I wasn’t comforted by that fact nor was I happy with my conclusion.

“It is hard being a person.” (Hoffman, Joyce, 1969) 

[1969 is the year I was married, and nothing has been easy since then, or after, or, in fact, my whole life, hearing loss included. You may have guessed that I’m writing a 3rd book, this time an autobiography–An Unpatterned Life. It’s going to be a doozy. Stay tuned!]