Sunday, December 29, 2013

Tips for Navigating Social Situations With Hearing Loss



I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas!

I wanted to take a few minutes and write about that oh-so-lovely intersection of hearing loss and social situations. I've gained a lot of self-confidence in this area, especially over the past several months, and I know I'm not the only person who's struggled with it. While this is by no means an exhaustive list, here are the things that have made social situations a lot easier for me. (As is the case with everything I write about hearing loss and hearing aids, I have no authority on wearing a cochlear implant, so CI users will have to be the judge of whether or not this information is useful.)

1.) Make sure your hearing aids are good quality and correctly programmed, and make sure you wear them all the time. I can't emphasize this enough. When I got my first pair of aids about 4 and a half years ago, I only wore them when I went out of the house for fear of wasting the batteries. The end result of that was my brain didn't adjust to them as much as it could have, and I didn't hear as well as I could have. Wearing your hearing aids consistently will help you hear better in noisier situations like restaurants and parties.

2.) Wear hearing aids that have a background noise filter. These days, most hearing aids have at least one channel that filters out at least some background noise. Don't even try to get through noisy situations without it. If you aren't sure how to access that channel, talk with your audiologist.

3.) Be discerning about when to advocate for yourself and when to avoid conflict. This has been a huge issue for me. I used to participate in a lot of Bible studies that were video-based with small group discussions, and it was always a toss-up whether the instructors would let my group meet in a quiet place or turn on the captions (or let me do it.) When I developed the habit of emailing instructors ahead of time to explain my situation, some of them told me right off the bat that they weren't going to accommodate my needs for one BS reason or another.

Please don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying we should never stick up for our needs or try to work things out. But I've wasted a lot of energy on selfish, stubborn people who just wouldn't budge. You have to know when it's worth fighting and when it's not. This is especially important if you have any kind of anxiety or mental health issues on top of hearing loss.

4.) Be up front in a matter-of-fact way. Depending on the situation, I might say something like, “I'm hard of hearing, so please face me when you talk. If I don't respond, I'm not ignoring you, I just didn't hear you.” My hearing loss does not affect my speech all that much, and my head scarves cover my hearing aids, so my hearing loss tends to go unnoticed by people unless I say something. I've wasted so much time being angry at other people and thinking it was their responsibility to make sure they could communicate with me. But they can't when I don't ask! Once I started communicating my needs in a constructive way, most people were more than happy to oblige.

5.) Try to be specific in asking for repetition. This shows the other person that you are genuinely trying to understand. Saying “What?” is rude and vague. “Could you repeat that?” Works when I've missed a sentence or two. But if I caught part of a sentence, the most effective way to ask for repetition is to repeat what I've heard, and pinpoint what I didn't. For example, “I'm sorry, you did what last Tuesday?”

6.) When playing board or card games, keep your communication needs in mind. With games making a comeback, it's important to think about how your hearing loss might affect things. If I'm going to be at a party or someplace with lots of background noise, I don't bother with games like Catch Phrase, where the whole game is based on verbal communication. I save those for quieter settings. I stick with games that involve little or no verbal communication. For games that involve minimal communication, like Set or BS, I'll sometimes come up with signs or gestures to use for those words. It's a handy tool even if you don't sign otherwise.

7.) Don't waste your time with people who don't “get it.” I kind of touched on this earlier, but it's important. Most people will “get it” if you tell them what you need in a constructive way. But this world is not a perfect place, and there will always be people who don't get it. You don't need them. You are a wonderful, ordinary, normal person who just happens to wear hearing aids. If someone else repeatedly does not try to understand that, that's their funeral.

I think that's about it! I'm going to be pretty busy until after the 1st, so I'll talk with you all in 2014! Have a happy and safe new year!

Monday, December 16, 2013

Silence Is Golden. So Shut Up!


I'm really trying hard to not complain about things that, in the grand scheme of things, don't really matter. But what happened today does not fit that description by any means. I am so hurt and horrified by what happened today. And I was even more horrified when some of you mentioned on Facebook that you'd had similar experiences.

I was at the Starbucks in a Barnes and Noble. As the cashier was ringing up my coffee, she asked if I wanted to purchase any gift cards. When I told her “no thanks”, she then asked if I wanted to purchase one of the books on the counter, explaining that the proceeds from those books went toward providing books for disadvantaged children. Had money allowed, I would have happily purchased ten of those books. But it just wasn't in the budget this time around, so I gave another polite “No, thanks.”

I have never experienced anything like what happened next. She asked me if I was serious, and how could I be so selfish. At the time I couldn't do anything other than pick up my coffee without saying a word and just walking over to an empty table. I was in too much shock and I had too much other stuff on my mind to really process it.

But now it's several hours after the fact, and I want to share what I wish I'd have been able to say to her:

You met me five minutes ago. You don't know anything about me. You don't know that I've been to hell and back. You don't know all the choices I've made in my life. I've made some stupid ones, but I've also made some incredibly selfless ones. If I say I can't afford a book right now, you have no business calling me a liar. I have been in your life for exactly five minutes, if that. If you are a Christian, your behavior today is a stain on the honor of what it means to represent Christ. I suggest you reread the story about the widow and the copper coins.

Since you clearly had nothing nice to say, the nicest thing you could have done was shut up.”

And the thing that really pisses me off is, I can be plenty judgmental. So if someone is judgmental enough to make me look good, I don't know what that says about them. We really need to stop judging people. I'm saying this to myself as much as anyone else.

And if we slip up and judge someone, let's at least have the common sense not to let it come out of our mouths.

Thursday, December 12, 2013

A Humorous Take On A Less-Than Humorous Day


Today was one of the worst days I've had in awhile. Everything from having to go to the dentist (HISS!) to funky blood sugars and other lame health stuff that was really kicking my butt.

But since it's in the past, and since laughter is the best medicine, I'm going to try to do a humorous run-down of how today panned out.

So, before my dentist appointment, I had to get gas. I got a new car earlier this summer, and I love it, but the one design flaw is the fuel door is on the right. Don't get me started on how wrong that is. Which I totally forgot until I actually pulled up to a pump on my left and realized, yeeeeah, this isn't going to work. The pumps on the other side were all full, so I had to pull into a parking spot and wait, giving all bystanders solid evidence that I'm weird.

I arrived at the dentist (turns out I just had to get an old filling re-done) and started my usual routine of listening to Josh Groban and getting all hopped up on nitrous. The first novicane shot didn't numb me up quite enough, so they gave me another one, and it wasn't long before the right side of my face was numb all the way up to my eye.

Having a numb eye is, hands down, one of the weirdest experiences a person can have. Just saying.

I had planned on dropping off an Etsy package at the post office right by the dentist after my appointment. However, there were two little details I completely forgot to factor into my plan. The first detail was the fact that I would have no control over half of my face after the filling, and would therefore look like I was having a stroke. (One time I had an audiology appointment right after a filling, and the audi took one look at my face and freaked out.) So I went into the post office wearing my scarf over my face. I felt like Wilson on “Home Improvement.”

The second detail was the fact that I was away from home for more than an hour without food I could eat. I always always ALWAYS have my food bag and some glucose tabs in my purse, but again, I didn't have control over half my mouth. I didn't factor that into the equation when I was packing my food bag for the day, so this translated into having plenty of food in my purse and no food that I could actually eat.

I briefly considered driving across the road to the coffee shop and getting a smoothie or something with a straw, but my other health issues chose that moment to unleash a wave of fatigue and nausea. And since it was the lunch hour, I knew it would be quicker to just drive home, assuming I could find a way to treat the low. I looked through my food bag, trying to see if there was anything I could suck on to make it easier to chew. After a failed attempt to soften an almond by sucking on it, I realized the only thing in my purse that I'd be able to suck on was glucose tablets.

What's more disgusting than eating a glucose tablet? Sucking on one! Seriously, it was gross. I wouldn't have done that if I wasn't driving. If I was anywhere else, I would've eaten actual food instead of chalk masquerading as candy.  But since this was a matter of safety, so I had to insert something gross into my face.  

And now that all this is in the past, and today is almost yesterday, I just can't stop laughing.