There’s one important detail from my trip to Liberty, Missouri that I haven’t felt ready to write about until now.
I didn’t want to admit what a struggle it was for me to hear the presenter during the Tai Chi Chih Intensive. Others confided that his voice was difficult to hear, which comforted me. But I noted they weren’t craning their necks forward to hear like I was.
Sorting through the mail after I returned home, I came across a business-sized envelope that looked legit with a return address that I didn’t recognize. I opened it. It was for a hearing test, and though I’ve thrown away dozens of these ads, this time I called and made an appointment.
The audiologist was an expert on hearing deficiencies. He invited me to step into a soundproof booth, put on earphones and push a button when I heard beeping sounds. Then I was to repeat words I heard into the microphone.
These tasks accomplished, I got out of the booth fairly confident I had aced the test. But when I looked at his monitor as he pulled up test results on screen, I could see the graph line showing my test results sinking below the line depicting normal hearing.
I left his office wearing demonstration hearing devices.
Even though I feel ready to write more about this experience, I’m not satisfied with the paragraphs above. They don’t speak to my experience of aging. I’ve noticed that when people write about aging, they tend to exaggerate and make experiences ridiculously funny or they lean towards describing everything that goes wrong—doom and gloom. Only a few people hit the tone I find helpful. These people describe the joys and the sorrows of aging using real terms. When I read this type of writing, I feel a strange type of excitement about being an elder. I want you to feel like that when you read my blogposts!
I want you to know how crushed I felt hearing (pun intended) that I needed help. I felt defective. I sensed that in a few minutes, the old familiar feeling that I had done something wrong would reappear.
I want to tell you about my hearing devices in a way that intrigues you and makes you wonder what it would be like to hear better. The first thing I noticed was how I could understand fast talking young people on a podcast more clearly. I want to share how I have been picturing the tiny computers in my ears gleefully waking up parts of my brain that have been dormant from lack of stimulation.
I’m fortunate that the technology for hearing assistance has improved and that I am at an age when I have the time to learn new ways of taking care of my health. While there are many reasons a person might need hearing devices, for me, it’s part of growing older. My hearing loss wasn’t dramatic, or funny, and it hasn’t left me feeling particularly gloomy. It was so gradual that I didn’t even notice it!
P.S. Doctors have a word for my type of hearing loss. Presbycusis: age related bilateral sensorineural hearing loss.
