Questions about Hearing Loss 1-4

I recently gave a 20-minute keynote about hearing loss. The reviews and responses were overwhelmingly positive.
The title of the talk is “WHAT? 10 Questions Most Often asked about Hearing Loss” The talk is based on my experience as a person with hearing loss and a lifetime of questions asked of me concerning the deficiency. This is a spinoff from the overview post of the questions about hearing loss talk. This post covers questions 1-4.

Remember, as explained in the overview post – we hear (meaning comprehending and understanding sounds) with our brains, not our ears. If you turn on your TV to a foreign film and turn off the captioning, you hear, yes, but you do not understand. Why? Because our BRAIN has not been trained to understand those particular “sounds.”

1.Where are you from?

This question I answer more than any other. Why?

Because I have this “accent,” people cannot identify. I used to smile and say, “I’m from Germany.” But lately, with my cochlear implant disc on my skull, I point to it and say, “I’m from Mars, and this is how I phone home.”

After the chuckles and smiles subside, I explain that I have a profound hearing loss, and the “accent” they hear is due to components of speech I have never heard, thus cannot pronounce. Those are the high frequencies. For instance, soft consonants like p, t, k, s and sounds like “ch,” “sh,” “st.”

Long-time friends (2 decades or more) notice that my speech becomes a bit clearer whenever I upgrade my hearing apparatus. That’s understandable. I hear more of those “silent” components of speech. Therefore, I can hear myself enunciate them.

With the cochlear implant, those sounds are loud and clear. I can replicate the sounds in my speech. The problem is, I don’t always wear my cochlear. We’ll discuss that later.

2.Do you hear anything? Are you deaf?

I believe this question about hearing loss stems from a misunderstanding of what deaf means. For me, and for the purpose of this post, deaf is not hearing anything and must rely on sign language to communicate. With that clarified, I am not deaf, and I do hear sounds. I hear lots of sounds. The challenge is those “sounds” are not clear. They flow through my ear as chunks of sound that my brain must interpret into something that makes sense.

Consequently, I respond to all sorts of sounds. For example, suppose my husband is in his office and coughs, sneezes, or emits some other bodily noise. In that case, it is not unusual for me to think he has said something. So I poke my head in his office and ask, “what, honey?” In public, any sound that resembles the long “a” sound at the end of my first name, I look around to see if someone is calling me.

Is it confusing at times? Indeed. But I have come to accept it as a part of my disability and work with it.

3.Do you know sign language?

This question about hearing loss grants me the opportunity for another humorous remark. “why yes, I do know sign language – but I usually save it for rush hour traffic.”

I live between two worlds – the hearing and the deaf.

In my world, it would probably be a good idea to know American Sign Language. But I do not. I did practice it while attending a special school for the hearing impaired during grades 3-6th. However, I transitioned to public schools from 7th grade on up. As a result, I’ve long forgotten the sign language I knew when young.

But I, as we all do, read body language! As the UCLA Professor discovered, 57% of communication is through body language. If you go back to your tv to the foreign film and, with captioning and sound off, you can still glean quite a bit of insight into what is transpiring by the actors’ body language.

Body language is why it is critical to make sure the hard-of-hearing person you are conversing with SEES you—more on this in a later answer to a question.

4.Do you read lips?

Absolutely! For me, even with hearing aids and a cochlear implant, I must read lips to interpret better the chunks of sound my ears are receiving. We all read lips. It is part of the component of the facial expression of communication.

I’d like, at this point, to address of common myth about lip reading. I believe the misunderstanding stems from detective types of TV shows and movies where the detective is sitting in the bar reading the lips of an adversary across the room. The detective picks up every gritty detail of how that adversary will rob the precious jewel from the London Museum.

Nonsense!

Studies reveal that even the most skilled and talented lip readers can only “read” 60% of a conversation if relying solely on the lips.

Our t-shirt store has shirts that remind others of the need to see lips.