Use It Or Lose It

 I'm sure you have all heard the old adage "use it or lose it" but maybe you didn't realize that it pertains to a lot more things than just muscles. 

I have told people who say they are having trouble doing something that used to be easy that they need to practice it more.  I started that when I saw an elderly relative who had always been spry and active struggle to get up off the couch. Apparently, she had been sitting too much that winter, and then she thought she was just slowing down because she was getting older. In reality, it was because she had not been using those muscles as much in the past few months and needed to retrain them.  We can strengthen our muscles at any age, no matter how old we get, but if we don’t use them they get weak.

I have glasses for reading. They are prescription glasses with a prism in them, not drugstore reading glasses. I don't always use them. I'm typing on my tablet at the moment and my glasses are not even in the room with me. My hubby cannot read anything without his, and they are not as strong as mine. He has progressive glasses so he wears his all the time. His eyes, or his brain, have gotten used to having assistance.  My eyes just see what they see and my brain must fill in the rest.

Just recently I got new hearing aids. I have worn one for close to twenty years but it was once again time to get a new one. I was losing my word  recognition so I needed to upgrade to a stronger model and I finally accepted the fact that maybe I needed two. It did not take a week for my ears and brain to adjust to all this help and suddenly I could no longer  hear without the aides in place. I am hearing much better now, while wearing my new hearing aids but without them I am suddenly a lot deafer than I have ever been. Just more proof that if you don’t use it, you lose it.  As it was, I wasn't using the part of my brain that could recognize words and I think that's worse. I'm better off needing help to hear properly than I would be if I could not understand what was being said. Even so, I have now turned the volume down three clicks and can still hear just fine with the aids. Maybe that will help me be less deaf without them. One can only hope.....

Can You Hear Me Now?

There are all kinds of handicaps. Some people are born with them. Other people acquire them though illness, accident, or aging. Some handicaps are visible and some are not.  Most people are ready, and willing to help people who are having difficulties due to most of these problems, in any way they can.  The problem is, certain handicaps actually have the opposite effect. 

Deafness is an invisible handicap. People often have no patience for it.  My audiologist offered me a tiny little hearing aid that would do the job of helping me hear very well, and nobody would even see it. She laughed when I told her I would rather have a bigger one that people could see.  I prefer people to understand why it is that I make them repeat themselves, or face me when they talk. I figure that if I give that visual reminder, they wouldn't forget.  I was wrong, of course.

Let me lay out a few rules for those of you who know people with a hearing loss:

1.  Don't talk to them from the far end of the house.  They will know you are talking but they will not know what you said.

2.  Don't start talking and then turn your back and walk away before you are finished.  Many of us rely on being able to read your lips, and even if we can't, your sound waves are going out in front of you.  What flows back toward the person you walked away from is distorted and hard to understand.

3.  Keep your hands away from your face.  Like I said, it helps if we can actually see you talk.

4.  If you normally talk a mile a minute, do try to slow down.  It's hard to catch what you are saying if it's all jumbled together.

5.  Get the deaf person's attention before you start to speak to them.  Simply calling them by name would likely help.

6.  If there is another sound in the room, like a TV or a radio, make sure that other sound is not between you and the person with the hearing loss.  That other sound will be picked up more easily than your voice when you are beyond that sound.

7.  If you want to have a conversation, it would be greatly appreciated if you turned off any competing sounds first, if that's at all possible.

8.  If you are being met by a puzzled look, even after you have repeated yourself several times, find another way to phrase what you are trying to say. Hearing aids may make sounds louder, but understanding what those sounds mean is not always as easy as you may think.

9.  If you know the hearing impaired person can hear better in one ear than the other, try to position yourself accordingly.

10.  Don't snap at us if we don't respond.  We have a Hearing Problem!

Please try to help us the same way you would if we were blind, or missing body parts, or had other more obvious difficulties.  We are doing the best we can with our particular handicap.