by Roz Burak

It’s a fact, as you age your hearing diminishes. Why do we say it ain’t so? I remember in my late 60’s not hearing what people were saying was a thing. My response —” Why do people mumble?” It was your problem not mine. Having someone repeat themself was a staple of all conversations. Or, I got the gist of the conversation and that was good enough. Really, who wants to hear all those words anyway.

I never really thought about hearing aids. My hearing loss wasn’t bad enough to be helped by hearing aids anyway, or so I thought. After all, I heard most of what was said. And life went on like that for several years. Two of my brothers had hearing aids, one loved them and one despised them. And, I was much younger than they were; I didn’t need hearing aids.

Then it happened. Friends, visiting from Arizona, invited me to dinner to meet their soon to be son-in-law. I’d known their daughter since she was born and was very excited to see who she thought was good enough for her. Dinner was at a noisy restaurant and we were a large party. Everyone was talking. Suddenly I realized I couldn’t understand anything anyone was saying. It was all a loud buzz. I watched myself pull away from the party— I was sitting there with a smile on my face, not hearing a word that was being said. It was awful.

The next day I called and got an appointment with an ENT doctor. Although my hearing loss was not extreme, it was bad enough to be an easily solvable problem. And within a month I was trying out hearing aids. It took several tries to get the aids that worked for me. That was fine. I was working towards a solution, Life is so much easier when I can just turn up the volume on my hearing aids instead of being annoyed because you’re “mumbling,”

The other plus of having a loss of hearing is I trained my dog Prince to alert me when my cooking timer goes off. I was always burning food because I couldn’t hear the timer while talking on the phone or watching TV. When I’m on my terrace he lets me know the phone is ringing or someone is at the door. Okay, that’s great; however, the bigger bonus is those skills allow him to be classified as a Hearing Assist Service Dog. Therefore, I can take him everywhere and he flies FREE on airplanes. WOOHOO!!!

Hearing aids were an easy solution to a growing problem. I know some people are embarrassed by hearing aids. They really aren’t any different than wearing glasses. As I said at the start of this post — hearing loss is a fact of life as we age. Hearing aids keep us connected to the sounds that make us happy — children laughing, birds chirping, people singing and day to day conversations.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. I’m looking forward to being with lots of noisy children and adults and hearing EVERYTHING that’s said!!!