When you live with someone with bad hearing loss, be prepared to repeat yourself. Sometimes endlessly.
He has hearing aids, but he doesn’t always remember to put them in, and even when he does he can’t always hear me. I repeat things, but because he has lost the higher frequency sounds my voice can be too high to hear. We end up in a guessing game. I say a word say ‘splurge’ for instance, and he will say ‘Forge, force?’ I repeat, then ‘sort? Sports?’ repeat again, trying to pitch my voice lower…. ‘splits?’ finally he gets it. The energy it takes to communicate is hard work. Tiring. Irritating. But ultimately we communicate.
I understand what you mean. I have a friend who lives in Victoria, he has hearing loss, doesn’t like using his hearing aids. He knows it is an issue so he prefers text messenger instead of phone calls.
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That’s a good idea, but my hubby won’t use his mobile so I’m going to try and persuade him to do that! We’ve started putting subtitles on the TV too.
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I heard that some people use white boards or little black boards for writing questions etc to their loved ones x
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Good idea 💡
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👍🙂
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I’m totally deaf in one ear and struggle with very specific sounds when there’s loads of background noise and conversation going on because I can’t turn it off. It’s all just white noise and incessant chatter.
Busy restaurants or pubs drive me nuts because it’s almost impossible for me to switch off and focus on just what one person is saying. I always tell people “I’m really deaf so please give me a nudge and look at me directly otherwise there’s a good chance I won’t catch a word” and it does make a huge difference.
Was fitted for a hearing aid but all that did was increase the volume of EVERYTHING which was even worse it was awful so I ditched that one and decided to carry on being deaf as a turnip.
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I understand, my hubby has tinnitus as well and sometimes his hearing aids whistle loudly but he can’t hear it. It makes him very grumpy when he can’t hear and keeps saying what’s the matter now? He also has PTSD which makes him very anxious and he jumps at loud noises. He also mishears so much. I really sympathise with you x
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Yeah it’s a really weird and frustrating thing but Jeez it must be awful for him if he has PTSD as well 😦
Wish I could offer some advice but sharing link to article of a deaf woman that rowed the Atlantic and used an app which allowed her to get rid of all the background noise from the open ocean so she could hear the voice of those on board.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51103423
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Thanks for sharing that. I will show him, inspiring. X
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Thank you, he thought it was really inspirational. X
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