On Deafness

I am slightly hard of hearing. I think many people have this problem and quite a few are not aware of it. Further, I believe that not enough has been done to make our lives easier. Compare with poor eyesight. The high street is full of opticians, diagnosis is nearly universal, correction products are effective and readily available, and there is even a maturing market for structural correction. For poor hearing we can make none of these claims, yet I believe the adverse effect on daily life is as great. Why the difference?

Although my separated wife often accused me of not hearing her, I didn’t take that as decisive evidence and I never had any other tests, so for years I lived in ignorance of a hearing problem. Then I had a sinus issue which led to various tests including one for hearing, and it was there I was told that both ears were weak but especially my left one. Most likely I have had the problem for years and years without being aware.

We all know that old people go deaf. My mum has been going deafer and deafer for twenty years or so. Her relationship with hearing aids mirrors that with much other technology. She went through a long phase of denial, then rejection. Then she quietly got herself an inferior (ie cheap) product yet refused to apply it, and then would not train herself to use it. Now, finally, she has a decent product, but she still refuses to use it often (for fear of the cost of new batteries). Hence she so far has not got used to the new way of hearing, and still struggles to put the things on correctly. Most of the time she still asserts that she is not deaf but others mumble.

Rather like the woman in Fawlty Towers, Mum is not the easiest customer, but I do think her experience offers some lessons. Although they have got smaller, hearing aids seem far too difficult to put on. It took her ages to find a shop to help her, and their products were poorly explained, poorly marketed and came with terrible customer service. And the product has all sorts of negative elements beyond size and awkwardness to fit. They are hard to get used to, need many batteries, are very fiddly, and still leave problems with extraneous noise.

What is it like to be a bit hard of hearing? The funniest and best explanation came in a novel by David Lodge called “Deaf Sentence”. I recommend this to anyone, but especially if you are a bit deaf yourself. A good analogy is taking part in a conversation in a language you know reasonably but not perfectly. You pick up the general drift but seem to miss the punch lines of jokes and nuances. You can ask people to speak more slowly and repeat things, but, out of social politeness and embarrassment, you tend to limit the times you do this. Instead you make assumptions, sometimes wrong, about what is said, and you pretend (even to yourself) that you understand more than you do.

Hearing difficulties are also very situational. A one on one conversation in a quiet room is usually OK. Many people at a dinner table is much more difficult, especially if the furniture is metallic and there is background music or noise from nearby tables. You also hear a lot worse with a cold or having recently been on a plane.

Now I know that I am a bit deaf and have moved beyond denial, there are things I can do. I can favour my better ear, whether in choosing my seat at a table or even a side of the bed. I can avoid some situations, or just ask people to compensate. But often there is little choice but to accept the problem. I do wonder how much damage I did to my career or even my social life while wandering around blissfully unaware yet plainly handicapped. Might this apply to you too? Maybe it is time to get a hearing test.

I have recently learned of a surprising number of other non-geriatrics who are partially deaf, and my guess is that there are many more out there who don’t know it. Think of all the people you know who talk unnecessarily loudly. The majority of these will be a bit deaf. They don’t hear, so talk a bit louder in the hope that others will talk louder too, a bit like when we shout down our mobile phones in public places.

Now I finally get my ears tested, the experience hardly fills me confidence. The test involves listening for a series of noises and pressing a button when you hear one. The noises tend to come at fixed intervals so you can score well with guessing. One time, it was half way through the test before I realised that I could see when the nurse was activating a noise and that I was responding visually rather than orally. I once took a test with a cold, hardly a representative time. And once I was asked to repeat words, only they were in a foreign language (Dutch, as I was living there) and I plainly had a disadvantage compared with natives. So there seems much room for inaccuracy.

Perhaps the test is not well developed because the basic line from the doctors seems to be that essentially nothing can be done to improve hearing. If it was bad enough, I could get a hearing aid, otherwise it was just a matter of putting up with it until it got even worse with age. And it should be bad before getting a hearing aid because of all the downsides to the products listed above.

So let us sum up what we have here. We have a complaint that is very common and seriously debilitating. There appears to be no structural solution, and development of solutions generally seems to have been very slow and poor. Society does nothing to make life easier for sufferers, for example by encouraging testing or promoting hearing-friendly environments.

All in all, this feels like a lost opportunity. Again, compare with eyesight. The way things are going with laser surgery, in twenty years time everyone in developed countries will have perfect sight.

If I am right, I wonder why. Perhaps one reason is the social stigma of accepting you are deaf – it is so linked to extreme age. If we could create acceptance, that might set off a snowball of open dissatisfaction leading to better efforts at solution. So who will join me in calling for government, entrepreneurs and society to do more for the hard of hearing?

Oh sorry, should I say that louder? Perhaps you didn’t hear me.