That’s the question.
And the answer is……I don’t know. When do we persevere with something and when do we say “whoah, something not right here”? I’ve written two previous posts on other aspects of this dilemma – I Give Up and Don’t Give Up (you can see I didn’t reach a conclusion then either) but this is specifically about hearing aids. Continue reading
Amazingly, it is a year since I started blogging. The first post on More Than A Bit Deaf was on 22 February 2016. I’m still enjoying it hugely. And I’m learning. The more I read about deafness (other people’s blogs, Facebook groups, things I look into to research the topic of a post) the more I realise that everyone experiences their hearing loss in a different way. We have different stories to tell, different preferences and different ways of coping.
Some of these differences are big ones, like the “Deaf or deaf” differences talked about in last week’s post. Some are more trivial. Continue reading
Are you proud to be deaf? (Or proud to be hard of hearing, if you prefer a different terminology?) No, I thought not. I would guess that almost all the followers of this blog are people who have experienced hearing loss in adult life (that’s apart from the readers who can hear perfectly well, of course – hi there, hearing friends). I don’t think we adult-onset hearing loss people feel at all proud. Frustrated? Certainly. Tired? Often. Fed up? Sometimes. But proud? No, I wouldn’t say that. I try to be proud of how I handle the situation, but that’s a different story. Continue reading
Five weeks on from my ears becoming totally blocked after a virus, things are a lot better. Not normal yet, but massively improved. I can’t tell you how relieved I am. Despite reassurances from the medical profession, it was scary. Here’s what’s been going on since the first post.
By the end of that post I was talking about a slight but significant improvement. Some sound got through. Some speech came back. But it wasn’t the speech I was used to hearing and it took a lot of hard work to understand, even sitting in a quiet room focussed on just one person. Continue reading
Are you signed up to text 999 (in the UK)? I wasn’t until very recently but I am now. It’s very simple to do (follow the instructions on www.emergencysms.org.uk) and is designed so that people with hearing difficulties or speech problems can easily get help in an emergency. Once signed up, you can send a text to 999 with the information you would give on the telephone (what the problem is, where exactly it is happening and which service you need). The emergency services then text you back within two or three minutes. That’s slower than ringing them but if you can’t make a call it could be a lifesaver. Continue reading
I’ve had the flu. Not a very bad dose, but enough to put me in bed for a couple of days and enough to block up my ears and cut off my hearing completely. I’ve had blocked ears before after a head cold or a virus but they’ve always “popped” again after a few days. This time they’ve still not “popped” nearly three weeks later and, to begin with, the loss of hearing was almost total, even with my powerful hearing aids. I originally lost a lot of hearing following a bout of flu in my twenties so it’s been hard not to fret that it might all be happening again.
Things are slightly better now but not enough for normal functioning. Here’s what happened. Continue reading
A few weeks ago I received a letter from my credit card company. They were very happy with how I was managing my account, the letter said, but they were reducing my credit limit. They didn’t say why. If I wanted to keep my existing limit (I did) that was fine, it was my decision. Just ring the call centre on……….
AARGH!!!!!!!
The letter didn’t include an address to write to……
DOUBLE AARGH!!!!!
I am so sick of this.
However, my new strategy kicked in. Continue reading
Since I’ve starting reading more blogs, websites and Facebook pages about hearing loss I’ve become aware of a wide range of attitudes towards, and experience of, lip reading and lip reading classes.
Some people seem to think lip reading is a miraculous “cure” for deafness. One organisation selling lip reading tuition online markets itself with the words “learn to hear with your eyes and never miss a word again”. Put politely, this is nonsense. Be assured, you can be an excellent lip reader and miss an awful lot. Continue reading
At home I’ve more or less stopped answering the phone. If Nigel is in he will answer it. If he’s out we’ve agreed it’s probably better if I let it ring. The chances of it being someone phoning me via Next Generation Text are infinitesimally low. The times Nigel has had to come home and solve the mystery of a muddled conversation in which I have completely misunderstood the caller (indeed sometimes misunderstood who the caller IS) are many. It wasn’t worth it. Let it go. It’s a shame the Tesco delivery man can’t ring to say he’s held up, but life goes on.
However, the other late afternoon the phone rang. It was dark, raining and I had been starting to fret about Nigel’s absence with our dog Izzy. Continue reading
One of the best things about starting this blog has been the fact that I’m now in touch with many more people with similar hearing problems to my own. I was delighted when I heard that one of those people, Deb, was about to launch a blog about her life with a Hearing Dog. Here’s a sneak preview. It’s going to be great………
“I am the very lucky recipient of a Hearing Dog and Vera has kindly invited me to write a guest blog about Hearing Dogs. So where to start? It is, as you may imagine, a large topic so maybe I should address the most frequently asked question I get on a daily basis. But perhaps before that I should tell you a little about me and my Hearing Dog. Continue reading
More than a bit deaf 