Author: Angie Aspinall

I’m Not Going on Vacation

I don’t know if this is peculiar to where I live but here professionals tend to have a habit of talking about people’s experiences of hearing loss as a ‘journey’.

Hearing Loss Luggage

According to the Oxford dictionaries, a journey is ‘an act of travelling from one place to another’. To me, a ‘journey’ involves setting out with the aim of reaching a destination. But that does not fit with my experience of deafness. I didn’t choose a destination or route and I certainly didn’t buy a ticket.

If life’s a ‘journey’, then the destination is the coffin, is it not? In this metaphor, having hearing loss is not the journey itself — rather it’s a heavy and somewhat cumbersome piece of luggage which some of us have to carry around. Sometimes, there may be a luggage trolley (hearing aid or other device) to make things easier and on occasion, someone might carry the luggage for us (watching something with the subtitles), meaning someone else has done the hard work for us, but, for the majority of us with hearing loss, we’ll be ‘carrying it’ with us for life.

And that’s fine. Everyone has something, don’t they? High blood pressure or a bad back. But do their doctors refer to those people’s conditions as ‘blood pressure marathon’ or a ‘bad back ramble’?

In the same way the media likes the phrase ‘battle with cancer’, so health professionals like a ‘hearing loss journey’.

Perhaps the ‘hearing loss journey’ phrase came about because of professionals studying the Kübler-Ross ‘five stages of grief’ which is also referred to as a ‘journey’, but is that enough for the phrase ‘hearing loss journey’ to have caught on?

Or is it something to do with the whole ‘pathway of care’ way of thinking and speaking about patients? Pathways, journeys… us deafies are clearly going somewhere. Perhaps at some point the professionals will let us know where they think we’re heading: that way, we’ll know what to pack!

So, this is a plea to the professionals out there: becoming deafened isn’t a journey with a destination. We haven’t bought a ticket, so please don’t talk about ‘journeys’: we’re adjusting to living with a disability, not going on vacation.

What’s In a Name?

I was fascinated by an earlier post from Stephanie about language and the lack of an original name for hearing aids, something the aural equivalent of ‘glasses’ and ‘contact lenses’ (as opposed to ‘seeing aids’). I also enjoyed Steve’s post about ‘hearables’. It made me remember something from my childhood that I thought I’d share with you.

When I was a young child, I didn’t realise people were even saying ‘hearing aid’. Because of the accent, it sounded like they were saying ‘eerie naid’, which had no meaning other than that to me, it was the equivalent of glasses. Someone’s ‘eerie naid’ helped them hear in the same way their glasses helped them to see: such was the way of the world in my three or four year old mind.

Things were further confused by my beloved Nan saying, “Pass me my glasses so I can hear you.” Unbeknown to me, my Nan had bone conducting hearing aids attached to her glasses.

In my mind, her glasses looked something like these Cats eye glasses — but then again, it was a very long time ago!

Cats eye glasses by Paul Taylor
Photo credit: Paul Taylor website

I wonder if giving the ‘devices in our ears’ a new name would help with the image problem aids seem to have.

Hearing aids have long been associated with old age/ageing which is not good for those of us who need them at a much younger age — even in childhood.

How about a new name such as ‘Personal Amplifying Devices’? That’s what a hearing aid is really: a personal amplifying device. This would be the name equivalent of ‘contact lenses’.

When I don’t have my lenses in, I say, “I haven’t got my eyes in.” Is it that far a leap for those of us who say, “Wait, I just need to put my ‘ears’ in,” to say, “I just need to put my P.A.D.s in or my amplifiers in”?

I think not and you have to admit, it sounds a whole heap better than putting your ‘eerie naids’ in.