The Truth About My Hearing Loss
On a chilly October evening in 2019, I noticed the speaker housed in the car driver’s door was very muffled. This annoyed me as it would cost a few hundred to fix, not to mention the effort of booking it in for a repair/replacement. I made a mental note to mention it to my wife when I got home, who later responded that she hadn’t noticed anything (not all that unusual).
That evening I sat inside the parked car slowly rotating my head, noticing that with the left ear, it was working perfectly fine and with the right ear, there was a notably more muffled lower volume, akin to listening to music through a wall.
Uh-oh.
The Damage
Test confirmed that I have 50% hearing in my right ear, and my left is also damaged at 80%.
Up until that point, I had assumed hearing loss was just a general overall reduced volume.
Well it turns out that it’s more complicated than that.
Affected people can’t distinguish certain tones and sounds (in my case sounds of letters “N”, “D” etc.) with natural hearing. This makes conversations, especially in louder environments or with high background noise (restaurants etc.) challenging.
In my case, the options were a medical procedure — a metal piston to replace the small bones in the ear (with a 50/50 chance of restoring hearing or complete hearing loss in the right ear) or hearing aids.
I chose the latter. Hearing aids in my mid 30s — great.
The Cause
As a lifelong music fan, in my twenties I attended many rock/heavy metal concerts in a number of venues; one of the most memorable was an open air concert in Prague of maybe 10,000 people. Standing 10 feet away on the left of a large speaker tower without ear protection, for 5 hours.
This is just my suspicion as to probable cause, there is nothing physically in scans to confirm, apart from doctors know the damage is confined to the small bones of the ear.
This is because I can fully process audio otherwise on both sides, confirmed by bone conduction tests (“headphones” which conduct sound via a metal band behind the ear to the brain, effectively bypassing the ear and it’s small bones).
Living with hearing loss
I hadn’t known then but for an indeterminate amount of time (potentially 10 years+) I was living with reduced hearing, compensating by naturally picking up lip reading.
It also made sense as prior to this, arguments were sometimes sparked by mishearing my wife (naturally, softly spoken) and repeating back to her what my brain put together, “filling in the blanks “— with her often thinking I was mocking her when I parroted back what I thought she had said.
Today I get by with wearing hearing aids and apart from needing to take them out when I sleep and shower, or for the odd day every 1–2 weeks to give my ears a rest, they really are not that much of an imposition.
They really do fill in the gaps; as proven by an emotional walk home when I first had them hearing the bird calls and general background noise of day to day life I had been unknowingly missing.
For the Uninitiated, I would class hearing aids as just below wearing glasses for comfort / ease of use once you get used to them (takes about a week.)
My aids are very small/discreet (matching hair colour) and are worn behind the ears with near invisible clear tubes attached to domes within the ear. They slip into a dock to recharge at night and have bluetooth for streaming music / taking calls just like Apple Air pods (Note: I tend not to use them for calling in public, as it looks like I’m talking to myself)
In Summary
Developing a disability is not a pleasant experience. To this day, I get frustrated if I’m out and have forgotten my hearing aids or if I’m at an event in a group and I can’t make out what people are saying (while amazing audio processing pieces of technology, the hearing aids can only do so much).
The other thing I find is without my aids on walks, people are more likely to “sneak up on me” which is unpleasant and usually gives me a start.
Lastly I find my natural hearing without aids has actually regressed, as my brain has learned to no longer strain to hear with the aids and thus has learned to stop compensating. That said with my hearing aids, I live life normally and there are worse things in life to deal with.
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If you enjoyed this article, let me know in the comments and I will write more about my journey with hearing loss. If you have hearing loss yourself I’d love to hear your experiences!
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Disclaimer: This article is written for entertainment purposes only and contains the author’s personal life experiences. This is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a qualified Therapist, Business Coach or Legal Professional. Readers are encouraged to do their own research. The author will not be held responsible for any issues arising as a result of implementing anything discussed within their writing.
