Do you have hearing loss? Are you related to someone with hearing loss? Do you ever wonder what it's like? Have you ever worn earplugs for a day to try to step into our shoes?⠀
Since I primarily see pediatrics, parents often ask me for a good description of what it's like for their child with hearing loss. ⠀
"What are they missing? How come he/she can hear me but they don't always know what I said? I can tell there's times where they totally hear me!" ⠀
Sometimes I have geriatric patients accompanied by their son/daughter and they are interested in what it's like for their parent. ⠀
We have a hearing loss simulator in the office. It plays an audio sample of someone talking. We can enter the patient's hearing loss in and filter over the audio sample so that whoever is listening can compare the two. It really hits home. But not everyone has access to this. ⠀
The analogy that I like to use is that it's like listening through Swiss cheese. "We get some of the words, some of the sounds but we have to take time and energy thinking to fill in the gaps. It gets tiring!"⠀
Look at this picture: If you weren't able to see through the holes and fill the gaps in, it reads:⠀
"This is how hearing loss feels to me when you: ⠀
-Talk too fast⠀
-Turn away⠀
-Don't get my attention first⠀
-Mumble⠀
Each and every hearing loss is different. Two individuals could have the exact same audiogram but have completely different speech recognition scores. Everyone's perception is unique - never exactly the same.⠀
The bottom line is that information is MISSED.
