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Answer the phone

~ Vera ~ 14 Comments
Copyright: iuriiau / 123RF Stock Photo
Copyright: iuriiau / 123RF Stock Photo

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 →

Elmo’s Dog Blog: the preview

~ Vera ~ 19 Comments
Puppy Elmo - destined for stardom
Puppy Elmo – destined for stardom

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 →

Don’t give up

~ Vera ~ 9 Comments
Copyright: garagestock / 123RF Stock Photo
Copyright: garagestock / 123RF Stock Photo

This post is an antidote to one posted in May – the one called I Give Up.  I Give Up was about deciding that some activity or other had passed beyond the realms of the possible.  For the sake of your sanity it was best to give up on it and look for new things that you COULD do.  The examples I gave were going to the theatre (I find captioned performances pointless because my hearing is now so poor that I have to watch the captions the whole time, completely missing the visual experience of the play) and attending events at a particular local venue.  Continue reading →

You can’t be a shrinking violet

~ Vera ~ 4 Comments
Copyright: juliatim / 123RF Stock Photo
Copyright: juliatim / 123RF Stock Photo

Since October I’ve been attending an excellent class on Art and Architecture, run by my local University of the Third Age.  The tutor, Ian, a retired university lecturer, is knowledgeable and entertaining.  A group of about twenty of us meet in a local village hall.  It’s great fun, and I’m starting to be able to tell my Baroque from my Bauhaus. (I was starting from a very low base).

About a week ago we had a morning in Leeds, looking at some of the wonderful buildings there.  Leeds city centre is a great place – very vibrant and very little affected by the sixties shopping centre monstrosities that are such a blot on the landscape in other towns.  It’s well worth a visit.   Ian pointed out to us lots of things I’d not noticed before and I had a lovely time.

It did, though, make me aware (again) that you can’t be a shrinking violet if you want to enjoy this sort of thing when you are deaf. Continue reading →

Communicating with the NHS – any progress?

~ Vera ~ 14 Comments
Copyright: mybaitshop / 123RF Stock Photo
Copyright: mybaitshop / 123RF Stock Photo

Audience participation time – that is, if you live in England.  A while ago I wrote about a new piece of legislation applying to the NHS in England (and indeed care homes, although I am concentrating on the NHS today).  A new Accessible Information Standard means that, since 31 July, all parts of the NHS have been obliged to ask all new and existing patients whether or not they have any communication difficulties – caused by hearing loss for example. Ta da! What an excellent thing! Visibility!

If you have, the health provider is meant to record the problem, and, in future, provide the help that you need to access the service.  Ta Da!  Another excellent thing!  Action! Continue reading →

Owch! Hyperacusis

~ Vera ~ 2 Comments
Copyright: doglikehorse / 123RF Stock Photo
Copyright: doglikehorse / 123RF Stock Photo

One of the more ironic aspects of my hearing loss is that I also have something called hyperacusis.  I know, I hadn’t heard of it either.  It basically means a hyper-sensitivity to some normal everyday sounds, so that they become distressing or literally painful.  I over-react alarmingly to the sounds of crockery or cutlery being put back in our kitchen drawers, for instance, or the clatter of pots and pans being stacked for drying on the draining board (especially if they slip and crack against each other – aaargh).  To me these everyday noises sound deafening, but more than that they induce real pain in my ears.  I’ve trained myself to refrain from yelling at my husband to STOP, because he’s not making a clatter deliberately.  Indeed, other people wouldn’t think it was a clatter at all.  Instead I take my hearing aids out (just for a few minutes). Continue reading →

Why lip reading isn’t a golden ticket

~ Vera ~ 15 Comments
Copyright: mistac / 123RF Stock Photo
Copyright: mistac / 123RF Stock Photo

Nigel and I have a private shorthand for those moments when he knows that I haven’t a clue what he just said but I’m not admitting it.  I know I should ALWAYS admit it but saying “sorry, I missed that” a thousand times a day gets very wearing.

The shorthand is “Lions in the Sky” because once, aeons ago, we were in the car together and he pointed out (something) in the sky.  It sounded like “lion” to me, but that didn’t make a lot of sense.  A lion?  In the sky? I couldn’t see anything in the sky, much less a lion, so I copped out and made some confirmatory response.  You know the sort.  “Oh, yeah”.  “Mmm”. Continue reading →

Hearing aid alert

~ Vera ~ 11 Comments
Copyright: carmenbobo / 123RF Stock Photo
Copyright: carmenbobo / 123RF Stock Photo

A few months ago one of my hearing aids began occasionally playing up, or rather occasionally switching off, for no apparent reason.  After twenty-odd years of using hearing aids I’m adept at solving the little things that can go wrong (faulty batteries, or wax or condensation blocking the tubing are the most common problems) but it wasn’t any of those.  Mysteriously, left to its own devices (outside my ear) for ten or fifteen minutes the aid would switch itself on again.  Then, it would work perfectly normally for a week or so and then – whoops – go (temporarily) off again.  It was a minor irritant.  When it happened I’d tell myself to contact audiology to see if it needed servicing or something, but I never got round to it. Continue reading →

“If you have a question please phone our customer service hotline” – or not.

~ Vera ~ 6 Comments
Copyright: yayayoy / 123RF Stock Photo
Copyright: yayayoy / 123RF Stock Photo

Alex Orlov recently wrote a post for the Limping Chicken in which he bemoaned the total inability of a variety of companies to respond to his requests to text him rather than phone him.  The Tesco delivery driver, IKEA, BT, BUPA, the Halifax – they all ignored his explanations that he couldn’t hear on the phone and proceeded to ring him anyway.  You can read his post here.

I so sympathise.  I don’t personally ask companies to text me because our house is off the map for mobile phones.  You can usually get a signal if you go to the top floor and stand near the window, holding your phone at ceiling height but – strangely enough – I don’t stand there all day just in case someone sends a message.  If a company wants a mobile number for text messages I pretend I don’t have one.

What drives ME to distraction is the very similar problem of companies insisting that you telephone their call centre if you have a problem. Continue reading →