For anyone with experience of mild to moderate hearing loss

[Jan]

Following on from the “Can’t hear this sound” thread, do you live with someone who has mild to moderate hearing loss or do you have this? Does it stop spontaneity in speaking? I am trying to learn to live with someone who refuses point blank to use hearing aids. My sister wears them but can only understand what people say if they are directly opposite her and she can then lip read. She says that her aids are up to date and regularly maintained. She also said that this stops her family just saying random things to her as they have got fed up constantly repeating themselves. She agreed that the spontaneity has gone from conversation.

I am getting to this point and am very unhappy about it.

Is this all I have to look forward to, a life without conversation, even if the aids were worn.

[Mr Tom Morrow]

Jan. I have hearing loss. Undoubtedly caused by my time in Construction using power tools 8 hours a day and working alongside excavators.

I have had my ears syringed out recently but that has to be paid for. Made a bit of difference but not much really.
The prognosis was I am not ready yet for hearing aids

I struggle to pick up conversations and need people to speak directly to me not to one side or with their head turned away.

I am constantly asking people to repeat what they say. My Wife is very good at telling me what someone has said but I know she gets frustrated.

[Blue nose]

My mum wears hearing aids and I just talk normally to her. Sometimes if she's in another room, particularly if doing something like boiling the kettle, she can't hear me but other than that it's fine.

[Andybear]

I'm deaf in my right ear and wear a hearing aid. It's still better if people speak up a bit though.

[fizzypop]

I understand where you are coming from. My husband has hearing loss. I asked him for years to get his hearing tested as I felt he was missing out on many things both in work and at home, he was oblivious to what he was missing as he couldn’t hear he was missing it. He was in his early 40’s at the time and kept refusing as he thought he was too young and that their was a stigma to wearing some. I found it increasingly difficult to have a conversation with him and had to make sure I was facing him before I started to talk and to speak to him in a louder voice than normal. He often would reply/agree to something and it was obvious he had no idea what I was talking about.

We used to go out for dinner with friends and we would have a conversation about something and he would join in, then 5 mins later he would start a conversation about the very thing we had all just been talking about.

The crunch came when one of our daughters said that there was no point talking to him as he couldn’t hear what she was saying. I told him this and explained how frustrating it was for everyone because he was too stubborn to have his hearing tested, again he didn’t really understand as he thought he was fine because he didn’t really realise he was missing anything.

In the end he booked an appointment to shut me up. The hearing tester wanted me to be there too so I could explain from my point of view what was going on. Sure enough he has moderate hearing loss. They also played me a recording which they could modify depending on his results so I could hear what he was hearing. It made me cry as I had no idea as to the extent of his hearing loss and what he wasn’t hearing.

He went privately to have his hearing aids and has state of the art ones and can now hear most things when he is wearing them. He will just sit in the garden and listen to the birds which he says he hadn’t heard for about 20 years. His hearing aids are so discrete, most people don’t see them. A few people in work know he has them a 4 of them have had their hearing tested after seeing his aids and 3 of them now also wear aids. Life is now easier for all of us.

[emmafleur]

Both my dad and my son are partially deaf. It does become frustrating when we have to keep repeating things but I think it must be so much worse for them. My dad lives with us and my daughters say things to him, then he looks to me every time to repeat what they’ve said more loudly. I feel like I’m interpreting a different language to him! My son gets on with it better than my dad (probably because he’s been partially deaf since birth). He’s waiting for an operation to fit some more grommets which helps a bit. He’s had numerous operations on his ears but doesn’t want to wear a hearing aid as he’s 28 and it’s just not cool at his age. My dads got a hearing aid but won’t wear it (maybe he thinks it’s not cool at 72 either ) I’ve never really thought about missing out on spontaneous chat, I guess because my son has always been like it we’ve adjusted without thinking too much about it. It’s the TV been on SUPER LOUD that is the one thing that’s frustrating. We used to put subtitles on when he was young so we could hear ourselves think. It certainly helped him to learn to read

[Connors Daddy]

Fizzypop - can i ask for a cost for the private hearing aids please?

My wife is always telling me i need to get my ears checked, but at 47, i don't fancy huge hearing aids, so more discrete may convince me...

[Jan]

“It’s the TV been on SUPER LOUD that is the one thing that’s frustrating.”

We have managed to overcome having our TV on too loud by buying a portable speaker and placing it on top of a CD type player on top of a table about 2 feet away from his ear.

[Jan]

Fizzy pop, that is quite a story. Thank you.

[Jessika]

I’m deaf in my right ear since 2015 after catching a virus which destroyed my auditory nerve. I have been fitted with a hearing aid which doesn’t work, I was told this would probably happen in my case but to keep going back through the system every couple of years due to advances in technology. It’s frustrating for those around me I’m sure. It’s frustrating for me as I never realised how many people mumble or the amount of discrimination that the deaf community are subjected to.