My name is John, and I'm 48 years old. I'm a husband and have 4 children plus a son-in-law. I work in the IT consulting field, and have been doing IT consulting for pretty much my entire career. I like flying small planes (when I ever get a chance to), Geocaching (Google it - it's fun), running, and spending time with my family. That's basically who I am. Depending on how you meet me, you might find out some other things about me. If you meet me online (it would probably be through my work with Oracle software or through my running hobby), you'd probably never know much more. If you meet me in person, you'd definitely notice the black (for some reason, Phonak calls this particular color "petrol") thing sitting on top of my left ear with a tube going into the ear; you'd probably also notice that I really focus on your face when you speak to me. If you met me over the phone, you'd definitely notice that I ask you to repeat yourself a lot, probably don't understand a lot of what you say, or (more recently) - I tell you that I'm using a phone with captions so please give me a little extra time to read what you said before I respond.
That's right, like many people, I'm Hard of Hearing (HOH). I've been HOH since I had meningitis at the age of 3. Since then, my right ear pretty much doesn't work at all (although I can hear the bass notes in music if I wear a headset), and my left ear doesn't work all that well, but a hearing aid helps it out a lot. For most of my life, hearing aids have served me really well - I have been able to hear quite well, enjoy music, understand people talking, etc. Challenges are what make life fun, and well, challenging. Some of life's challenges we get to choose for ourselves - learning to fly small planes, for example; other challenges are selected for us - such as being HOH.
Being HOH isn't a challenge that I resent in any way; throughout my life, I've had a supportive family, and I am very fortunate to live in a time of history where I have access to technology that helps me meet the challenge. Hearing aids, blutetooth streamers, closed captioning, captioned telephones, etc - it's all great stuff. If I was born 100 years earlier, I would have had a much different life and many fewer options than I have had - so I consider my self blessed.
Lately, the HOH challenge has gotten harder. After doing just fine on the phone for most of my life, it's started to become difficult to impossible (depending on the person I'm talking with) to carry on a telephone conversation. I'm asking my family to repeat themselves an awful lot. I don't listen to television anymore - just turn the volume down and the subtitles on. I guess it's part of getting older; my hearing wasn't that great to start with, so even a little deterioration is really noticeable. I didn't really do anything about it though, just figured it's part of life. One day I went in to see the Audiologist to get the tubing replaced in my hearing aid and to make sure the program in my HA was good; in order to do that, the audiologist needed to give me a hearing test. Seeing the results of that test was shocking - I'd lost about 10 to 20 db of hearing in my "good" ear - that doesn't sound like a lot, but it was a huge change. More shocking to me was my single-word speech recognition score - 40%. I used to do really well (over 90%).
So that's kind of my background and what got me to the point of starting this blog. I don't know how much time I'll have to spend on it - between working and having an active family, there's a lot going on (isn't there always). I wanted to share my experience as a person who happens to be HOH - plus, I'm now starting on a journey to look at options beyond hearing aids - I'm at the point where a new hearing aid isn't the answer anymore. One thing that will NOT change is that being HOH doesn't and will not define me - *I* define me, so I'll always be Hard-of-Hearing, but it will never be who I am.
That's right, like many people, I'm Hard of Hearing (HOH). I've been HOH since I had meningitis at the age of 3. Since then, my right ear pretty much doesn't work at all (although I can hear the bass notes in music if I wear a headset), and my left ear doesn't work all that well, but a hearing aid helps it out a lot. For most of my life, hearing aids have served me really well - I have been able to hear quite well, enjoy music, understand people talking, etc. Challenges are what make life fun, and well, challenging. Some of life's challenges we get to choose for ourselves - learning to fly small planes, for example; other challenges are selected for us - such as being HOH.
Being HOH isn't a challenge that I resent in any way; throughout my life, I've had a supportive family, and I am very fortunate to live in a time of history where I have access to technology that helps me meet the challenge. Hearing aids, blutetooth streamers, closed captioning, captioned telephones, etc - it's all great stuff. If I was born 100 years earlier, I would have had a much different life and many fewer options than I have had - so I consider my self blessed.
Lately, the HOH challenge has gotten harder. After doing just fine on the phone for most of my life, it's started to become difficult to impossible (depending on the person I'm talking with) to carry on a telephone conversation. I'm asking my family to repeat themselves an awful lot. I don't listen to television anymore - just turn the volume down and the subtitles on. I guess it's part of getting older; my hearing wasn't that great to start with, so even a little deterioration is really noticeable. I didn't really do anything about it though, just figured it's part of life. One day I went in to see the Audiologist to get the tubing replaced in my hearing aid and to make sure the program in my HA was good; in order to do that, the audiologist needed to give me a hearing test. Seeing the results of that test was shocking - I'd lost about 10 to 20 db of hearing in my "good" ear - that doesn't sound like a lot, but it was a huge change. More shocking to me was my single-word speech recognition score - 40%. I used to do really well (over 90%).
So that's kind of my background and what got me to the point of starting this blog. I don't know how much time I'll have to spend on it - between working and having an active family, there's a lot going on (isn't there always). I wanted to share my experience as a person who happens to be HOH - plus, I'm now starting on a journey to look at options beyond hearing aids - I'm at the point where a new hearing aid isn't the answer anymore. One thing that will NOT change is that being HOH doesn't and will not define me - *I* define me, so I'll always be Hard-of-Hearing, but it will never be who I am.