October 2015 – Page 2 – Open Ears Archive

Hear Haiti: Giving the gift of sound

Open Ears is following a group of Sonova team members as they head to Haiti with the Hear The World Foundation. Nerissa Davies is an audiologist with Connect Hearing in Courtenay, BC, Canada. She has seven years experience in pediatric audiology is passionate about helping people of all ages hear and communicate with their loved ones.

Day 3:
Today was an amazing and wonderful day in Haiti. We got up early and enjoyed a delicious breakfast prepared by the stellar staff at New Life Children’s house, then after a pep talk from Cathy we drove out to the Deaf Academy in Leveque.

Honestly, I have never been so warmly welcomed anywhere in my life. The children swarmed out to meet us, with joyful smiles and hugs aplenty. Truly, I have never known children so eager to laugh, so generous with affection and so grateful for help. In particular, Mike (our on-site hearing aid technician) was a big hit with the young boys, who smothered him with hugs. Every time I looked at him, he had one boy in each arm, one boy clinging to each leg, and sometimes even a fifth one on his back! It was easy to see how pleased they were to have us and how hopeful they were that we could help them.

And so we set about doing just that.

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Hear Haiti: A Thankful Canadian Abroad

Open Ears is following a group of Sonova team members as they head to Haiti with the Hear The World Foundation. Julie Garneau is the Technical Documentation Coordinator for Unitron, and her favorite sound is the great-tailed grackle.

Day 2:
Although it was only our first full day, it was one of the most exhausting and rewarding days I’ve ever had.

We went for a drive today, and it was an adventure in itself! The roads themselves are dirt, with potholes – craters, actually – sometimes full of water, sometimes not. There are no lines on the road, no traffic lights, and no stop signs. There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of rules or regulations about driving, either. And sometimes chickens run in front of the cars. It’s not like anything I’ve ever seen before, or likely will again.

We started our morning by going to MetalWorks – this amazing little artist community where the majority of the crafts were made with scrap metal. They were unbelievably beautiful, and the artists were the most talented group of people who took so much pride in their work. I even bought several pieces to take home.

From there, we went somewhere that actually had me in complete awe. There’s a small school on the outskirts of Cité Soleil. From the outside of Anacias’ Capva School, there is a guarded metal gate. The inside has a medical center on the right, and a school on the left. Inside the school, there is one room for the smaller children, and four pods for the older ones. They were just finishing classes as we arrived, and many of them ran outside when they saw our vans pull in. We were greeted with more smiles and waves and happiness than I ever have been. I truly felt like a celebrity.

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Hear Haiti: A beautiful arrival in LaPlaine

Open Ears is following a group of Sonova team members as they head to Haiti with the Hear The World Foundation. Laura Gifford is an Audiologist and Senior Account Executive at Unitron. Her favorite sound is the opening note of a Duran Duran song.

Day 1:

Up and off to the Nashville Airport at 5 am. After having a day to prepare for the trip (physically and emotionally) I was finally getting excited about leaving.

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Hear Haiti 2015: BE THE CHANGE

In this Open Ears segment we’ll be following a group of Sonova team members as they head to Haiti with the Hear The World Foundation. Jenn Brinn is a digital marketer who works at Sonova e-Hearing Care in Nashville, Tennessee. She is passionate about technology, travel, coffee, documentaries, and her family.

On January 12, 2010, a catastrophic 7.0 magnitude earthquake hit the Caribbean country of Haiti, with the epicenter located only 16 miles from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. An estimated 3 million people were affected by the quake and it is estimated that more than a quarter million people perished. While Haiti has always been plagued with an overwhelming number of orphaned children, the number has doubled since the disaster, increasing the total to almost one million.

News of the tragedy quickly filled television screens and media outlets in the US. Celebrities held fundraisers and people donated money by texting a number on their phones. I remember it being an emotional and devastating moment, but then eventually, the buzz faded away.

But three years after the event, and still committed to the people of Haiti, the Hear the World foundation started HEAR HAITI, an initiative to help support and improve the lives of those living with hearing loss in Haiti, especially children orphaned by the 2010 tragedy.
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Broadway show with deaf actors is ‘enlightening in its diversity’

Theater goers can attest, when one leaves a musical they often walk away with the show tunes stuck in their heads. But a new Broadway revival is leaving the opposite impression, with most of the focus solely on the actors; half of whom are deaf.

Deaf West Theater’s production of Spring Awakening, which opened in New York in September, stars eight deaf actors, eight hearing actors and seven onstage musicians, including Academy Award and Golden Globe winner Marelee Matlin.

Photo: Kevin Perry, courtesy Spring Awakening

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Don’t Eat my Hearing Aid!

One of the most common accidents with hearing aids is a pet thinking it’s lunch.*

If you Google the phrase “pets eating hearing aids,” you will find endless articles and pet shaming photographs detailing this horror. No matter how often I read these stories however, I never believed it would happen to me. Throughout my life as a hearing aid user, I never had problems with my dog, Daisy, or my cat, Greta, going near my hearing aids. I could leave them on my bureau every night and know they will be in the same place the next morning. Although Greta and Daisy were senior animals when I received my Audèo V, both of them were in the prime of their youth at ages eight and three, respectively, when I received my first hearing aids at age 12. I was lucky that even then, they never once mistook my hearing aid for a meal.

“Does phonak have a replacement policy for when the ‘dog ate my hearing aid?” Photo: Phonak Facebook Page

My views on pet behavior around hearing aids, however, changed when I started taking live-in pet sitting jobs at age twenty-two when I met a cat named Neeley.

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Eloise Garland “takes over” Phonak’s Instagram

At Phonak, we are committed to fighting the stigma attached to hearing loss, to tearing down barriers for the hearing-impaired and to finding new and innovative ways to help everyone reconnect to the beauty of sound. We also know that individuals play a strong role in breaking down those stigmas.

To celebrate those in our community who are being open and proud of their hearing situations, we’ve teamed up with some of our favorite Instagrammers, and asked them to capture their personality and signature looks, and show us what it really means to live with hearing loss.

Last week, we featured 20-year-old Eloise Garland, a music student from the UK.

She is an inspiration to many people – especially teens – with hearing loss, both in what she’s accomplished in her personal life, as well as the unique way she shows of her hearing aids with cool stickers and decorations that she sells on her Etsy.com store, Rainbow Tubes.

You can share your story with us too using the hashtag #lifeison on Instagram! Together we can break down the stigmas of hearing loss.

Follow Phonak on Instagram.

“I grew up in the countryside and, even as a student in London, I enjoy taking the opportunity to get out of the city and find a good mountain to climb! Even on mountain walks I’ll never miss an opportunity to raise deaf awareness, and Phonak’s mascot, Leo the Lion, is always a good talking point with the people I meet along the way! I recently took him on up a very windy mountain in the Lake District National Park, in England.”

“I first noticed that I couldn’t hear myself when I was about 11 during a choir practice. It turns out I was losing the overtones, which are the frequencies that make the music sparkle. When I first got my hearing aids I was very self-conscious and avoided wearing them. I struggled up until college when I got fitted with Phonak hearing aids.”

“I have three beautiful cats and had never heard them purr until one of the cats decided to lie on top of my Roger Pen! Now I use it all the time to hear their quirky noises and purring. After all, why put limits on who can use the Roger Pen?!”

“I really enjoy taking the time to listen to music and read a book in the evenings, usually with a nice cup of tea. Reading a good book and listening to music transports me to another world and is my main way of unwinding at the end of a busy day. This picture shows one of my favourite books, Pride and Prejudice, with my Roger Pen connected to my iPhone… and of course, a lovely cup of tea!”

“My driving license is something that I worked hard for, and for me it is a huge mark of independence. I enjoy driving and regularly go out to beautiful areas of North Wales such as Snowdonia and the ‘Evo Triangle’ for the fun of it. Hearing the noise of the engine is important to me as it helps me to get the best out of the driving experience, and my hearing aids enable me to do just that.”

“I have enjoyed baking since I was a child when my mum and I would bake scones, Bara Brith (Welsh fruit bread), and carrot cake. Although it can get a bit messy, my hearing aids can stand up to pretty much everything in the kitchen!”

“As a student, socializing is important to me, whether it is going out to events or just having some dinner at home with my friends. My hearing aids help me to keep up with conversation, and using total communication (a mixture of sign and speech where needed) makes life even easier. This photo is of me and two deaf friends at a picnic using sign and speech to communicate.”

“Can you really work as a hearing care professional with your bad hearing?”

This is the question that some friends of mine have asked me when we were talking about my job. De facto, this is not a completely fallacious train of thought. There was a time in the past when I was wondering the same: particularly around my A levels, which, as they say, open all the doors to working life. “Really? For everybody?” were my thoughts.

At that time, I was attending a regular school and could perfectly manage my congenitally profound hearing loss in both ears by simply sitting in the first or second row in the classroom. Moreover, I always had terrific, attentive teachers and friends around me for support if necessary. Things then became more challenging when I had to think about my upcoming working life.

Suddenly, I became aware of my handicap and as a consequence, I was wondering which professions I would be able to take up with my hearing impairment.

I want to give you an idea of what my hearing loss means. With hearing aids, I perceive sounds as you would perceive a pixelated and blurred picture, in which you can recognise the shape and the gender of the person but not the details like the pattern of the pullover, for example. Enough to be able to cope with it. Continue reading ““Can you really work as a hearing care professional with your bad hearing?””