Author: Angie Aspinall

What Colour Are Yours?

I’m always interested to know what motivates people to choose a particular colour of hearing aid. My first one was a flesh-coloured NHS in-the-ear device. My first pair were also what passes as ‘flesh-coloured’ and were the only colour available. But when I went to buy my first pair of Phonaks, there was a choice of colours — but I didn’t get to choose. I was given a pair on loan and when I liked what they did for me acoustically, I just got to keep them.

My audiologist chose the colour closest to my hair colouring, which seemed a logical choice at the time, but the trouble with having chestnut brown hearing aids is that when you put them down on dark wooden furniture, they’re pretty hard to spot.

Also, if they fall on the floor onto a dark carpet, they’re also hard to find. I’ve had this happen when brushing my hair, as the CROS aid can easily be flipped off the ear and onto the floor. (This is because I opted for a tiny retainer rather than a dummy in ear dome/CROS tip fitting to secure the aid.)

Once, when looking for the CROS, which I’d dropped on the floor, I noticed my dog had something in her mouth. Eek! It was my aid!

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Sit. Wait. Off You Go. The Training Regime of a Hearing Dog.

Assistance dogs have a reputation for being well-behaved and there’s a reason for this: they have a LOT of training!

At the UK charity Hearing Dogs for Deaf People, puppies are socialised by volunteer Puppy Socialisers who work with the pups to get them house-trained, confident in various settings, comfortable around people and other dogs and happy to walk on a lead. They also start them off with the basic commands of ‘sit’ and ‘wait’ and train them to come when called.

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BiCROS Aids — They’re Magic

I started with single-sided deafness when I was thirty. As time passed, I often thought that even if my deafness in that ear eventually became profound, I would be able to manage so long as I had hearing in my other ear. Then otosclerosis developed in my other ear and I needed to wear a hearing aid. The aid, lipreading and positioning strategies enabled me to cope and continue my job as a trainer for a local authority.

And then, (if you’ve read my previous posts, you’ll know) I lost the hearing in my better ear quite suddenly and my single-sided deafness switched sides: the severely deaf side was now the ‘good side’ and the ‘good ear’ was now a ‘dead ear’.

It was a confusing time – not least because after years of ‘positioning’ everyone to my left side, I now needed to do a complete switch. Not that I left the house much immediately after the sudden deafness, but when we did, my husband Richard and I both kept getting muddled up about which side we needed to walk on or where to sit.

As a consequence of my sudden deafness, I discovered the CROS hearing aid and the BiCROS system.

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Not all Hearing Dogs are Labradors

I’ve wanted a Hearing Dog so much for so long — but I thought it might never happen. When life throws you curveball after curveball, it’s easy to become a pessimist. But on a sunny day in January 2015, I found myself on my way to the Hearing Dogs for Deaf People’s Beatrice Wright Centre (named after Lady Beatrice Wright, co-founder of the UK charity) in the rural location of Bierley in East Yorkshire.

Hearing Dogs are trained to alert deaf people to specific household sounds and danger signals in the home and when out and about. Since dramatically losing most of my hearing, I became convinced that a Hearing Dog would help give me confidence and independence I had lost, and so I embarked on the application process.

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Where Do You Keep Yours?

When I first started wearing a hearing aids, I was forever losing them but now they have a home and it’s no longer an issue.

The first hearing aid I had was an in-the-ear kind from the NHS. It wasn’t comfortable and it was set too loud and so I used to take it to work with me and only wear it when I was in a meeting. Consequently, it lived its life mainly in pockets and I spent most mornings trying to retrace my steps to see where it had ended up in order to stuff it in the pocket of that day’s outfit for emergency use only. I then learnt to lipread and abandoned the aid altogether.

When I later needed an aid in my other ear, I purchased some behind the ear aids with receiver in the ear and open fit domes. I mainly managed with just the one aid and so one lived in my ear and the other lived a varied life in pockets, handbags and in its case in various locations in my house. This pair had a remote control, which led a nomadic lifestyle; living in jackets, coats, jeans, handbags, on tables – anywhere its fancy took it. The aid I used to use had a single place I’d put it every night – a little ceramic bowl on my dressing table – but the other aid and remote could end up anywhere.

Almost every exit of the house started with, “Where’s my remote? Where’s my other aid?” and a frantic search. I needed to get more organised. I started to leave the remote on the coffee table every evening and so I knew where to locate it each morning and this worked – mostly.

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My Strategies for Coping With Single-Sided Deafness

When I started losing my hearing at the age of thirty, I was really embarrassed about it and I didn’t want people to know I was going deaf. It felt like a failing and I took the news that I needed a hearing aid pretty hard.

I did not want to accept the diagnosis of otosclerosis. I’d read that it was hereditary and painless and I was having a lot of pain and didn’t know anyone in my family who’d had this condition (although my Grandmother who died when I was five did have deafness of some sort but my Dad and Aunt don’t know the cause). Most of all, I just didn’t want to accept that I was going deaf.

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Hyperacusis and Recruitment

Oooh, after dipping my toe into some research about my hyperacusis, I’m now delving a little deeper and have discovered some interesting information on The Hyperacusis Network.

Its introductory paragraph is this:

Imagine being at a movie where the sound track is turned to the highest volume. Actors’ voices are screaming at you. After five minutes, you leave holding your ears and cursing the theatre for its poor judgment. Turning newspaper pages, running water in the kitchen sink, your child placing dishes and silverware on the table — all are intolerable to your ears. A baby cries or a truck screeches its brakes to a halt and the sound is excruciating. What has happened to my ears?

Oh dear… this sounds just like me…

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Dreaming of a Hearing Dog

When out and about with my dog, Tilly, I have been known to refer to her as my ‘unofficial hearing dog’ as a bit of an ice-breaker when meeting new people. I do this as a way of letting them know they’re talking to a deafened person and that I might not be able to follow everything they’re saying. I’ve also used the term in my writing and in my event speaking in the context of telling people about the five year waiting list (update: now 3 years!) there is for an official hearing dog. And, I sometimes speak about how, when I lost my hearing suddenly, I suffered panic attacks and a loss of confidence in going out of the house without my husband. I felt I just couldn’t wait that five years for a dog and so we started looking for a rescue dog to adopt to keep me company and help me feel more secure when my husband goes out.

Tilly is a rescue Westie – an ex-breeding bitch from an illegal ‘puppy farm’. She lets me know when someone’s at the door (by barking and running to the front door or if we’re in a room where the door is closed, she lets it be known she wants to get out of that room so she can run to the front door). However, when the phone rings, the smoke alarm sounds or the burglar alarm goes off, she does absolutely nothing at all. She is clearly not a proper hearing dog!

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What Not Being Able to Use the Phone Has Cost Me

Christmas is a time for remembering old friends, but sometimes it can also bring back some sad or unpleasant memories. Seeing a former friend’s name in my address book reminded me of something that happened a few years ago…

After my sudden deafness in my ‘good ear’ in 2011, I could no longer use our telephone or my mobile for calls. Some friends were accommodating, converting our communication to text, email or social media but, sadly, others weren’t so accommodating.

English bulldogs dressed up as santa and rudolph

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Top Three Surprisingly Relaxing Visitor Attractions in Florence

As you’ll have seen from my profile/Gravatar I’m a travel writer (as well as being a deafened entrepreneur). Recently, I was in Florence, Italy and not having the best time of it because of the noise pollution and my hyperacusis. My only remaining hearing is in the mid-to high range in one ear and without my hearing aid, I can still hear very loud, very high sounds. (Like anyone with Otosclerosis, my audiogram is like an upside-down version of most people’s and my hearing deteriorated from the lower frequencies first.) This, coupled with my sensitivity to certain frequencies, meant I found the traffic noise in Florence particularly difficult to bear. I did however find some quiet attractions that I thought I’d share with you here.

View-from-Amphitheater-(C)-Angie-Aspinall-small

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