Sometimes in life, you need to take a risk — go outside your normal day-to-day routine for a chance to enrich your life, learn something new, or push yourself to develop new skills. For me, that time is now. I am embarking on a 4-week yoga teacher training in Fiji. It is something I have always wanted to do and the timing is perfect with my children at summer camp. Maybe one day I will teach yoga classes for people with hearing loss.
One of the reasons hearing loss is so frustrating is because we cannot control it. When entering a new situation, we don’t know what listening challenges we will meet. We can’t figure out in advance if an important speaker will be a mumbler or worse yet a mumbler with a voice in your hardest to hear frequencies. We have little authority over our hearing loss, but what we can control is how we react to it and what steps we take to counteract it. We take back the power when we learn to find comfort with discomfort.
The banging is excruciating. So are the jack hammering and the sawing and the beeps from the trucks backing up. And it is all outside my door. Living in New York City has many advantages, but one significant downside is the noise. Not only are cars and buses rushing by on the streets at all hours, construction is happening almost everywhere. This month it came to my street, and it is expected to last for quite some time.
Leaving my apartment building now takes some extra navigating — do I take the long way around the block to avoid the noise or do I plug my ears and make a run for it. Neither choice is ideal. Even when I am inside I can hear the ongoing work. Thank goodness I have my noise-cancelling headphones at the ready if the cacophony becomes too much.
Yesterday was a belt and suspenders type of day with my hearing loss. I was headed to the critically acclaimed production of The Ferryman on Broadway. I love theater and often attend open captioned performances sponsored by TDF, but sometimes no such performances are available. Lucky for me other accessibility options are increasingly common on Broadway, including infrared headsets, the GalaPro closed captioning app, and sometimes even a hearing loop.
For those not familiar with the term, belt and suspenders is an adjective defined by Merriam-Webster as “involving or employing multiple methods or procedures to achieve a desired result especially out of caution or fear of failure.” In other words, it means having more than one method to make sure your pants stay up, or in my case, more than one method of hearing technology.
I recently took part in a usability study for a large hearing aid manufacturer. I always enjoy doing consumer focus groups related to hearing aids and other hearing technologies. The more feedback we as users provide to the manufacturers, the more likely it is that they will meet more of our needs in the future. Usually I get a sneak peek at a new app that is under development or an innovative feature that is to be added to a company’s hearing aid, which is also fun.
This study was different. It focused on manipulating and cleaning three different behind-the-ear (BTE) hearing aids. Since I have never regularly used a BTE hearing aid — I always have used ones worn in the ear canal — it was all new to me. During the exercise, I learned to put on and remove ear pieces, and take off, replace and clean plastic tubing and domes. Simple activities, but they were not easy to execute. I quickly learned that wearing this type of hearing aid requires a very steady hand.
