I walked into the office yesterday morning and walked straight into a conversation between a few people. I said hello and answered a question from one of them and then walked over to my desk. I took my coat off, grabbed my cup to make a tea (I’m English, we do a lot of tea), turned around and….

I got the look from a few people

That look that means I instantly know that someone has spoken to me and I didn’t hear them.

I’m not sure I can describe the look but if you’re hard of hearing that I bet you know what I’m talking about? The look is kind of part embarrassment, part indignation and part amusement. In fact, I don’t really know what it is but the look is always the same, no matter who’s doing it. The picture on the left is about the closest I could find!

I’ve been getting the look for years. It used to annoy me a lot when I was younger, I would get really upset and either storm off or have a bit of a go at the person giving it. But I’ve learned to brush it off, in the office yesterday I just said, “you what?”, answered the question after it was repeated and went to get my tea.

One thing I still don’t get though is why do I still get the look? I mean, everyone knows I’m partially deaf and I wear hearing aids – certainly most of the people having the conversation in the office yesterday morning know. So what is the look for? Is it because they don’t know how to respond after I’ve not heard them? Are they too embarrassed to speak up and re-ask the question? Did they think I was ignoring them on purpose? Was it just funny that I didn’t hear? Guess there’s only one way to find out, ask them.

Do you ever get the look? How do you handle it?

I’m usually fairly relaxed about my hearing loss and people’s attitude towards it. It’s doesn’t bother me overly if someone decides to use a comically loud, slow and patronising voice if I ask them to repeat themselves – I just tell them they don’t need to do that. It doesn’t bother me if someone decides that repeating themselves is too much trouble – they probably aren’t worth listening too anyway.

But there’s one thing, a few little words, that make me want to spit blood, it’s probably said innocently but it’s irritating beyond belief. Brace yourself for this:

“Oh, he just hears what he wants to”

You really think I pick and choose what I want to hear? That I turn it on and off as I please? I wish I had that luxury. I really wish I had that choice. That’s like pointing to someone in a wheelchair and saying, “meh, she’s just a bit lazy, likes a sit down”.

I’m usually fairly relaxed about my hearing loss and people’s attitude towards it. It’s doesn’t bother me overly if someone decides to use a comically loud, slow and patronising voice if I ask them to repeat themselves – I just tell them they don’t need to do that. It doesn’t bother me if someone decides that repeating themselves is too much trouble – they probably aren’t worth listening too anyway.

But there’s one thing, a few little words, that make me want to spit blood, it’s probably said innocently but it’s irritating beyond belief. Brace yourself for this:

“Oh, he just hears what he wants to”

You really think I pick and choose what I want to hear? That I turn it on and off as I please? I wish I had that luxury. I really wish I had that choice. That’s like pointing to someone in a wheelchair and saying, “meh, she’s just a bit lazy, likes a sit down”.

New York rapper Foxy Brown recently opened up about her deafness with talk show host and comedian, Mo’Nique. The female MC spoke about how she went deaf a few years ago and how she has now managed to regain her hearing.

Foxy Brown said: “It was 100 percent gone, overnight. They don’t even know why. I have the best surgeon in the world who specializes in ear problems and the operations and surgeries and Wednesday night [in 2005], I was out shooting the cover of XXL with Jay-Z, Kanye West and LeBron, and Thursday morning I woke up and couldn’t hear anything. I was completely deaf. 100 percent.

“I just knew that God had got me then. Because I kept running and dodging him and he kept giving me signs and little warnings, and they say God will get you first in private and if he don’t get you then, then he’ll get you in public.”

I have good hearing days and bad hearing days. Today was a good day, I had a conversation with someone who was a fair distance away across our open-plan office – I heard them easily and I realised that I’m not often able to understand them at that distance. I don’t think my ability to hear fluctuates from day to day but there’s definitely good spells and then not so good ones.

When you have a hearing loss and understanding conversation is a common struggle then the little drops in hearing ability can make a big difference to your communication. To your mood too, I’m definitely happier and more talkative when I’m more easily in the conversation.

I don’t think it’s my actual hearing that is fluctuating, I think it’s other things like how tired I am, if I’m more awake and alert then I concentrate more on the conversation. Tiredness makes my tinnitus worse too, which definitely makes a difference. Getting sweaty ears – I’ve noticed I hear less after I’ve been for a run or played football. If I’ve got some wax in or around my aids – even a small bit can tip me from just about hearing someone to not quite being able to. And batteries too, I’m not sure if I’m imagining this one but I’m sure that the volume my aids are producing dips on occasions just before the batteries are about to die. Seems like there’s a lot of little variables that make a difference.

One thing that causes a huge problem is catching a cold. A cold is annoying for everyone – for me the sniffles and headaches are nothing compared to having to get through a week of hearing even less.

Of course differing levels of background noise will make an obvious difference, but I think there’s much more to it than that. I notice my good and bad days in the office where the noise levels are pretty constant. It’s all the little things.

There’s one thing that people could say about my hearing loss that does get to me but in general I try not to stay calm when I get into a situation because I didn’t hear something.

Sometimes I get that look and I feel like an idiot, sometimes I get frustrated because someone will not make themselves heard, sometimes I get nervous because I’ve lost the conversation and if someone asks me something I won’t have a clue what to say and will have to admit that in front of the group. Many times I’ve given someone the wrong impression that I’ve ignored them.

But I always try and give the person the benefit of the doubt. It’s not easy to know how to act around someone with a hearing loss or some other kind of disability.

I’d be the same if I saw someone in a wheel chair struggling to get into a shop. I don’t know anyone in a wheel chair so I don’t have first hand experience of how to behave around them. Do they want me to push their chair into the shop? Should I just treat them the same as the other customers? Do I get a shop assistant to help them? I don’t know. Would they be offended if I asked them if they needed help?

So it’s the same with the people who refuse to speak up – maybe they are shy of talking louder. And the people who SHOUT when you ask them to repeat what they said – they’re probably just trying to be helpful.  Would you like them to write it down for you? What that offend you?

People just don’t know how to react to people they don’t understand. Go easy on them.

Bumped into someone yesterday and had a brief chat. Well, they had a brief chat, I had nothing; it was without a doubt the dumbest conversation I’ve ever had, I feel like an idiot.

They opened the conversation with a couple of sentences, I couldn’t understand a word of it. The obvious thing to do was to tell them I didn’t hear them, so why didn’t I? I guess I was thinking, “I might be able to pick up a few words and work out what they are going on about“. I didn’t.

They talked a bit more, their mannerisms suggested they weren’t asking a question so I just nodded and smiled. Still no idea what they are talking about and now I have a problem: they’ve been talking for enough time for it to be very awkward for me to say, “uhh… sorry, I haven’t heard a word you said for the last 5 minutes”.

In the end I started just saying some stuff myself, could’ve been relevant but I very much doubt it. I did pick up one of their questions at the end of the conversation and answered that but in a 5 or 6 minute conversation I head about 4 words and never told them, I just tried to bluff it.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

Think I learnt an important lesson: If I can’t hear or understand the first sentence someone says then it is unlikely that I am going to be able to hear anything they say after that. People normally have their own comfortable speaking volume and style and they aren’t going to suddenly change after one sentence. If I don’t hear straight away I need to tell them and not get myself into that situation again.

What do you do? Do you mention you can’t hear straight away or let yourself get into a sticky situation?

This is from a Sonitus Medical press release.

Sonitus Medical Inc, developers of SoundBite, a nonsurgical and removable hearing device to transmit sound via the teeth and bone, has announced the publication of the first peer-reviewed article on its hearing system. “Preliminary Evaluation of a Novel Bone-Conduction Device for Single-Sided Deafness,” has been published in the most recent issue (31:492-497, 2010) of the Otology & Neurotology professional journal.

“The data presented in this initial publication shaped the development of our nonsurgical bone-conduction device,” said Amir Abolfathi, CEO of Sonitus Medical, in a statement. “It laid the groundwork necessary to complete our SoundBite hearing system, which has since been investigated in a clinical trial whose findings have been submitted to the FDA. As part of our sustained commitment to generate good clinical data, we look forward to sharing our clinical trial results in a future publication.”

Gerald R. Popelka, PhD, professor of otolaryngology and chief of the Division of Audiology at the Stanford University School of Medicine, Palo Alto, Calif, is the article’s lead author. Popelka, who serves on the company’s scientific advisory board, and his coauthors, reported on key measurements of the hearing system related to oral function and oral health, calibration, auditory performance, speech intelligibility, and overall comfort.

You can read it on the Sonitus website, via Hearing Review.

I’ve been wearing a pair of Starkey’s new S Series hearing aids for about a month now. I have the in-the-canal (ITC) model. On Starkey’s website they list the S Series’ main features. I’ve written a bit below about how each feature is working for me.

PureWave Feedback Eliminator

I have not had a single squeak of feedback. The feedback-elimination program was run when I had the aids fitted and they’ve been perfect since.

Acoustic Scene Analyzer

Speech is definitely clearer and easier to understand with the S Series. Voices are not so deep sounding and are less muffled. I quite often walk along next to a busy road during the day and the noise of the cars passing used to muffle the voices of the people I walk with – the S Series helps a lot to reduce the road noise and keep the focus on the voices.

T²

I’ve written before about this feature, I think it’s a great idea. I don’t have it set up at the moment as I do not have a touch-tone mobile phone. The standard S Series gives your audiologist the ability to switch between T² or volume control via an on-the-shell knob – it is possible to have both the T² and volume-control option together but you need to ask for it before the aids are sent to Starkey for building.

InVision Directionality

The thing that most impresses me about the S Series is that I am can now localise sound much easier – i.e. I now know where voices are coming from! Meetings at work which had more than 4 or 5 people in used to be a nightmare for me because I could hear that someone had spoken and in most cases hear what they said but often I wasn’t able to quickly work out who said it because I didn’t know which direction the voice was coming from. The S Series has really helped to pinpoint voices for me – I’ve really noticed a difference, especially when more than one person is talking at once.

AudioScape

The noise reduction is good. This is really the first time I have used noise reduction so I don’t have anything to compare it against. As I’ve said before, road noise is now reduced but voice clarity remains – it’s easier to hear people when I’m travelling in the car with them. The noise reduction is sometimes noticeable when it changes, it is not a always completely seamless thing – if there’s a noise then it’s loud for a second and then your hear it reduce when the reduction kicks in. Having said that, I don’t find the noticeable reduction a problem and it’s not that often that it occurs.

Wind noise is still a problem for me. Not as bad as it used to be but I still have a problem understanding people in strongish winds.

Intuitive Features

The inbuilt indicators do a good job – most of them feature a voice rather than just a beep. You get someone in your ear telling you that your battery is low. Your audiologist can also program them to tell you when they are due for a service or you are due for a checkup, which is an easy way to remember. As you turn up the volume there’s a beep to let you know that you’ve gone up to the audiologist’s recommended volume setting, a good way to avoid over-amplification. You get a voice telling you which programme you have selected when you switch.

Last but not least the S Series has a self check feature – if you open and close the battery door 3 times the aid will self test and then tell you whether it is working correctly or not.

Automatic Telephone Response

There is a telephone programme that the aids switch to as you put the phone to your ear. I have found that voices are now clearer and a bit easier to hear with the S Series but I do still struggle, but considering the extent of my hearing loss this isn’t surprising.

Music & Television Processing

Can’t say I’ve noticed any major difference when watching TV or listening to music.

Overview

I’ve been really pleased with my S Series, they help me to hear better in a number of different situations. I haven’t tested them on different programmes yet, I always use the default setting – next time I’m at a party or a pub I’ll try out the programmer for that. I really want to try out the T² feature as well. I’m going to write another article about other things I’ve noticed with the S Series but here I wanted to try and give a user’s perspective on whether Starkey’s buzzword feature list make a difference – they do.

Starkey have recently introduced touch controls to their S Series hearing aids, a feature they are calling Sweep.

The BTE S Series models have a touch-sensitive area that takes up most of the top side of the shell. You can use this control to either change volume or switch between programs. By default, an up or down motion increases/decreases the volume and a tap changes the program – but this can be configured differently if you want.

I already like the S Series’ T² feature for allowing you to control them via a mobile phone and Sweep is another nice feature that makes the S Series easy to use.