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Learning to Live With Hearing Loss
By Val Bedard
Sometimes while walking on nature trails or parks, I will ask my husband (who is hearing) to tell me what he hears. We will stop and he will listen and try to describe for me what he hears. I am astonished as to what he does hear and that there is a lot of things happening around us that I am unaware of. I will look around and try to use my imagination to pretend that I hear those things too. Of course, I don’t hear them but I am able to appreciate all the activity that is going on around me in the park or on the trails.
I think that sometimes we (who are hard of hearing) need to describe to our friends and families what we do hear and what we don’t. Sometimes I have to step outside of my “comfort zone” and admit that I don’t hear what they hear. By having them describe what they hear and then when I admit that “I don’t hear that” they are often surprised. For a hearing person, it is difficult to understand how I can get by in a “hearing world” when they take for granted their ability to hear. This helps to educate and raise awareness of people in my world to understand why it “appears” that I do alright, when in fact I am just more aware of my surroundings that the average hearing person.
I am often surprised when people tell me that “gee, I didn’t realize that your hearing was so poor, you do so well”. My reply is that I am not trying to hide the fact that I have a hearing loss, it’s just not a label that I am comfortable with. I would rather that people get to know me first, as an outgoing person, good sense of humour, kind-hearted, entrepreneur, etc. who just happens to be hard of hearing.
Too many times, I tell people that I am hard of hearing and they are “frozen” and they start speaking very loudly and over-enunciating their words to me when before they “knew” they spoke to me normally. It used to really hurt my feelings, I would wonder why they are suddenly talking to me that way, but now I realize that they are trying to be helpful and after a while, they do forget and start talking to me normally again.
Val Bedard has a profound hearing loss since birth. She owns her own business Hear Well Services Ltd. (http://www.hearwell.ca), sells assistive listening devices for the hearing impaired, can be reached via email at info@hearwell.ca or by telephone at 1-888-549-2092. She is also Past President of the B.C. Chapter of the Canadian Hard of Hearing Association and lives with her husband of 24+ years along her dog Katie and cat Neelix.
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