Why was everyone always mumbling, like they had marbles in their mouths?
Why did my husband and son constantly complain that I cranked the sound too loud on the television? Couldn’t they tell there was something wrong with the speakers?
When did the tea kettle whistle become so faint?
And why were people looking at me funny when I replied “Fine, how are you?” to the question they just asked? At least that’s what I thought they asked.
Clearly, the world had a problem.
I couldn’t be the one with the problem, right? I was a healthy woman in my early 50s — I didn’t need any medication for anything, was an enthusiastic equestrian, had a successful career, and enjoyed a fulfilling family life. I traveled, I was a public speaker. With so many things going on, maybe I was merely distracted and overwhelmed by bings and dings and buzzing, the cacophony of modern life.
This is what I thought right up until that moment in the staff meeting.
I had gathered everyone to review pages for an edition of the magazine before it shipped to the printer. I was inspecting one of the layouts when suddenly I realized the room was very, very quiet. Too quiet.
I looked up to see everyone staring at me expectantly, except for Tobin, who seemed upset.
“Uh, OK you guys, what’s going on?” I asked.
My art director Karen let out an exasperated sigh and said with her usual blunt candor, “Sam, didn’t you hear Tobin talking to you? Or were you planning to ignore him? You really need to get your hearing checked!”
To say I was embarrassed is an understatement — more like mortified. I apologized to Tobin and asked him to please repeat what he’d said. As soon as we wrapped up the page review, I went into my office and closed the door. And shut the blinds.
After all, if you’re going to cry at work, you need some privacy.
A club I didn’t want to join
An audiologist confirmed what everyone else had already figured out: I had moderate hearing loss.
Despite all the evidence around me, I was still surprised to see the irrefutable results of my hearing test, an objective graph of hills and valleys that created a picture of the sounds escaping me.
Another surprise was that this loss wasn’t primarily caused by all those rock concerts I’ve enjoyed throughout my life, although they didn’t help — being around loud noise does have a long-term impact on hearing, audiologists will tell you. I thought of a time in the late ’80s when I had interviewed Alex Van Halen, drummer for the iconic rock band Van Halen. He kept saying, “What?” and “I’m sorry, can you say that again?” during our conversation, until he finally laughed and told me, “I’ve been playing drums so long I can’t hear anything.”
But no, my audiologist explained that my particular situation is caused primarily by genetically inherited damage to nerve fibers in the inner ear, a progressive condition called sensorineural hearing loss.
A light bulb went off in my head. My mother had worn hearing aids from her mid-forties on, and so had my grandfather and various cousins. Suddenly, I understood that being hard of hearing didn’t run in my family, it practically galloped.
My family, it turns out, isn’t unique. In fact, we joined a club with many members: Hearing loss is one of the most prevalent health conditions across the world, according to the World Health Organization. In California alone, about 3 million residents are deaf or hard of hearing, or so say statistics from the Orange County Deaf Equal Access Foundation website.
And here’s another truth, according to information from the Mayo Clinic: More than half the people in the United States older than 75 have some degree of age-related hearing loss.
Aging? Who, me?
If I’m honest, that “age-related” part is what kept me from acknowledging all the evidence of my hearing issue. I still wanted to think of myself as a vibrant, capable, dynamic person. I wanted to think of myself as an attractive woman who could still be appealing to my husband. Facing the fact of my hearing impairment meant facing all the stereotypes I had bought into about aging — and beneath those stereotypes, my deep-seated fear that getting older would equal a loss of personal power, of value, of meaning.
Those old-age stereotypes are so deeply entrenched that it’s hard to know where to begin ripping them up.
Worry created anxiety, which created insomnia, which created a pressing need for me to Google “hearing loss effects” late into the night. And what I found didn’t ease my worry: Unaddressed hearing loss is linked to an increased risk of dementia, and of falls that can lead to serious health consequences. What’s more, once your original hearing is lost, it’s lost. There’s no getting it back.
Reader, here’s where I tell you that I started to feel scared, and very sorry for myself.
What pulled me out of it was the wise words of a friend of mine, Jen Pastiloff. Aside from being a social media phenomenon and sought-after workshop leader, Jen is the author of “On Being Human: A Memoir of Waking Up, Living Real, and Listening Hard.” She also lives with a profound hearing loss, and is nearly deaf. In one of her essays, “Losing My Hearing,” she wrote:
“It’s exhausting, straining to make out what people are saying. I read lips, but that’s also sleep-inducing. Staring so hard at mouths making their O shapes or their various forms of joy or disgust, it can wear a person out. Sometimes I simply stare into space, because really, what else is there to do when you can’t hear and you’re tired of pretending?”
That made me realize that not facing my hearing loss had already constricted my life. My denial was what was making me “old.” I thought of the restaurants I avoided because of how difficult it is to make out what people are saying above the din. I thought of the times I had stayed silent and not engaged in conversation, rather than risk the possibility of misunderstanding what was being said back to me. I saw the ways I was making my life smaller and duller — my fear of not being a vibrant, vital person had become a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.
Jen’s words rang in my head. I too was tired of pretending.
Now hear this
I wish I could just write, “And then she lived happily ever after,” but we all know no story ever really ends that way.
Once I got over my denial and decided to deal with the fact of my hearing loss, I had to tackle the somewhat daunting process of actually getting hearing aids. I say “daunting” not because there aren’t viable, plentiful options for hearing aids — there are. Many feature technological advancements that employ Bluetooth so you can magically adjust the devices to your needs in any given situation, and come in sleek, discrete designs.
No, the daunting part was all about money. Despite the prevalence of hearing loss and the well-studied detriments it can have on your health, most health insurance policies don’t cover hearing aid devices or the cost of examinations for fitting them. Period. Does this make any sense at all? Nope. Nada. Zip.
The devices recommended to me came with a (gulp) $5,000 price tag — although there was an even more refined option, if I wanted to spend $7,000. Uh, no.
After I picked myself up off the floor — not really, but I swear I did feel faint at the prospect of shelling all those thousands out of pocket — I started to look for solutions.
Hearing loss assistance exists, but it’s an uneven patchwork of local and state agencies, with nonprofits stepping up, like the Kiwanis and Lions Club. Yet this doesn’t address all the need. Many hearing aid manufacturers offer financing plans, which is something, I guess. Over-the-counter hearing aids are some help in a pinch, but they just amplify nearby sounds and aren’t tailored to the nuances of individual hearing loss. Good old Costco offers the best option for many, offering hearing tests and good devices fit by an audiologist for around $1,500.
For my particular type of hearing loss, coupled with the demands of my career, the best option ended up being the most expensive. Those hearing aids would have been out of reach for me financially, however, if a group of friends hadn’t gotten together and created a GoFundMe to help make up my budget shortfall. Accepting help from friends and family humbled me, and also made me part of another club — about a third of all GoFundMe campaigns are reported to be for medical expenses.
I know how lucky I am to have had this support. Every time I’m in a crowded room and can actually follow a conversation thanks to my hearing aids, a wave of gratitude still washes over me.
Learning to really pay attention
As helpful as hearing aids are, they’re still not able to give you the experience of life like when your hearing was intact.
What I’ve had to learn is a new way of being in the world, a way that was never possible when I was still pretending my hearing hadn’t lessened. Facing the truth means that I’ve had to become more present to what’s going on around me, to really stop to observe my world, to not just hear but to listen deeply.
People call that friend of mine mentioned above, Jen Pastiloff, the one with the profound hearing loss, a “fierce listener.” I have yet to achieve it, but I keep it as a goal.
This way of being also demands that I be frank about what I didn’t get, to not pretend, to not be too proud to admit something is hard for me. To face the world with an almost child-like honesty, learning and relearning as I go.
