deaf

Ratchet up the bravery setting

~ Vera ~ 2 Comments

One of the best things I’ve read about deafness recently is on the SayWhatClub website.  Michele Linder and Chelle Wyatt (Michele and Chelle) write posts about lip reading but, as they rightly point out, you can’t lip read unless people are looking at you, speaking at a reasonable speed, standing in a good light (and so on) and THAT doesn’t happen, more often than not, unless we take charge of the situation and ask for what we need.  So their latest post is less about the mechanics of lip reading and more about how comfortable we are (or are not) with our hearing loss and making other people aware of it.

That’s a big topic.  Continue reading →

Eating whilst deaf

~ Vera ~ 10 Comments
Copyright: bbbar / 123RF Stock Photo

I probably wouldn’t be big on eating out even if my hearing was good (I love to cook) but meals out when you can’t hear certainly have their challenges.

Problem one – Busy, noisy pubs, restaurants and cafes with lots of hard surfaces for the sound to bounce off (tiled floors, tables without table cloths, windows without curtains).  It’s hard to believe the difference that soft furnishings make to speech comprehension if you have hearing loss, but it’s true.  They absorb a lot of the clatter and make speech much easier to understand.  Open plan restaurant kitchens are a particular disaster – all that rattling of pots and pans and the shriek of the coffee machines.  I’m picturing Pizza Express as I write this.  I like Pizza Express, but the acoustics can be terrible.  Continue reading →

Bing bong

~ Vera ~ 6 Comments

One minor casualty of our building works is that the doorbell stopped working.  It was at least twenty five years old so it didn’t owe us anything, but it had an excellent sound for me – a deep, long, loud buzzing – and it was a shame to lose it.  I resolved to look up what was available in the Action on Hearing Loss catalogue but before I got round to that a couple of minor problems occurred.  Nigel left his keys at home one day and had to resort to ferocious banging on the front door to get my attention (scarred by previous experiences, he knows there is no point knocking politely).  Continue reading →

Deaf at the dentist, and other random things that have been going on

~ Vera ~ 8 Comments
Copyright: maximillion / 123RF Stock Photo

Recently I had a check-up at the dentist.  Dentists’ surgeries are not hearing-loss-friendly environments.  The main problem is the dentist’s mask.  Lip reading?  Impossible.  Then there are all those hygienic hard surfaces, perfect for creating a noisy, echoing environment and disastrous, therefore, for making sense of speech.  Also presenting a challenge are the plastic goggles they give you when water-spray equipment is being used in your mouth. Continue reading →

Tips for hospital waiting rooms

~ Vera ~ 14 Comments
Copyright: neyro2008 / 123RF Stock Photo

Last week I had my follow up appointment at the Ear Nose and Throat Department, after my blocked ears saga.  The outcome of the visit was that I was referred for another cochlear impact assessment, of which more in another post some other time. Today’s post is about the process of waiting and queuing,

I arrived at the hospital incredibly early because parking is a nightmare.  Public transport isn’t an option.  From where I live it would mean taking two buses and one train, with a probable journey time of about two and a half hours each way.  That’s if you ever got there at all. Continue reading →

My thoughts on Parliament’s adjournment debate about NICE’s cochlear implant rules

~ Vera ~ 6 Comments

Whoah – what a long title.  Today’s blog comes to you courtesy of the Limping Chicken – the world’s most popular deaf blog, laying eggs every weekday.  Last Friday they published my post on the above (thank you Limping Chicken).  Here’s what I said…..

It’s not often that Parliament debates deafness, so Friday 24 March was important; an adjournment debate* discussed whether the current rules set by NICE, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, are preventing some adults who would benefit from a cochlear implant from receiving one. Continue reading →

Just a little thing

~ Vera ~ 8 Comments
Copyright: iimages / 123RF Stock Photo

I used to have a work colleague who complained about people saying “could you just?” at work.  Could you just check this over for me?  Could you just remind me how to do Y?  He complained that the sum total of the “could you just” demands on him made big inroads into his productive work time.  One “could you just” was such a little thing – how could you refuse?  But they add up.

Sometimes I feel a similar thing about the minor irritants of deafness.  One such thing – poof! – it’s nothing, taking no time to sort out.  But the drip, drip, drip of a series of minor irritants – well, that can get you down.

My recent example of this is so trivial I’m almost embarrassed to tell you about it, but here goes. Continue reading →

To persevere or not to persevere?

~ Vera ~ 12 Comments
Copyright: photoman / 123RF Stock Photo

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 →

Do you take your hearing aids out to relax?

~ Vera ~ 28 Comments
Copyright: rrraven / 123RF Stock Photo

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?

~ Vera ~ 20 Comments

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 →