Hearing Impairment ...a personal story

Hearing loss/impairment is a disability that has personally affected me my entire life. When I was a kid in the 1960s and my younger brother called a popular musical variety television program “Jawmesser’s Jewminy”, my family thought it was so cute. Turns out he had a severe hearing lass and the show was Don Messer’s Jubilee. He began wearing hearing aids in elementary school. My older sister was diagnosed with the same type of hearing loss about the same time but was very resistant to aids for many years.

Both James and Kathryn were/are proficient lip readers but hearing aids have made life ad work in the “hearing world” more manageable. They both did B.eds. Kathryn retired three years ago and James now works as an employment counsellor for the Department of community services. I have never really considered them to be disabled as they have always done everything the rest of the family did.

I asked James to describe his new hearing aids.

“My name is James MacCormack and I have severe bi-lateral sensory neural hearing loss. I have recently purchased 2 digital Latitude hearing aids made by Unitron. Previously, I wore analog hearing aids. With advances in hearing aid technology digital hearing aids are able to automatically adjust to various hearing environment. In the past I would have to manually adjust the volume of the analog hearing aids depending on the sound level of where I was. The digital aids are continuously monitoring the audio input and making appropriate adjustment based on my hearing loss. In addition, the digital technology is also Blue tooth compatible. This allows me to automatically connect to the Blue tooth feature on my cell phone for improved reception and ease of use. I’m still trying to work out the feature of the new hearing aids that will allow me wireless connection to my television and stereo speakers.

Overall, there has been a significant improvement in the quality of the sound with the new digital hearing aids. There has been a period of adjustment to the new technology, but the benefits outweigh any drawbacks.”

I was first introduced to this video three years ago while working closely with an APSEA teacher and a student's ASL interperter. They did amazing work. Because I have such a close family connection to hearing impairment, I have come to know the challenges faced by my siblings. There have been lots of frustrations but humour has always helped.