Healthy Habits: Hearing Loss

If you have never experienced hearing loss or had friends or family members deal with it, you may not be able to imagine what it's like to be hampered in your ability to communicate or miss out on a dimesnion of the world around us. But that's reality for Shanna Groves (aka Lipreading Mom).

 

Ten years ago, Shanna had just had her first child, and noticed her ears were ringing like crazy. With a diagnosis of progressive hearing loss, she refused to wear hearing aids and her kids have learned - after many reminders - to look at their mother so she can read lips when they're talking. But earlier this year, she started wearing state-of-the-art ReSound hearing aids with wireless accessories. She has a mini microphone wireless accessory that she can clip onto her children to hear them more clearly when she’s driving or in noisy environments. She no longer has to read their lips.  

Shanna says, "I have used my hearing aids and the mini mic in the car with my kids, in a noisy restaurant with a friend, and at the doctor's office with a chatty nurse who has her back turned to me. And in all these settings, I was able to have relaxed and engaging conversations."

Shanna to now works to promote deaf and hearing loss awareness as a result of her own struggles. From being afraid to wear hearing aids because of the stigma associated with them, she has now learned to embrace her hearing loss. Since receiving her ReSound hearing aids, she has been blogging at lipreadingmom.com about the impact these hearing aids have had on her life. 

 

“Hearing aids are a gift. Imagine hearing birds chirping for the first time, or a baby’s laugh, or a kitten purring. By placing hearing technology in my ears, my whole world of listening goes from gray tones to a Technicolor symphony.”

 

Shanna is partnering with ReSound to promote “Show Me Your Ears!”, a campaign created to erase the stigma associated with wearing hearing aids. At the root of it all, Shanna doesn’t want other moms to miss out on hearing their children or any other hard of hearing individual to miss out on the beautiful sounds of everyday life.  As the holidays approach and we spend precious moments with family and friends, being able to hear is more important than ever.

 

The goal of the Show Me Your Ears campaign is to get people to post photos of their ears at http://www.facebook.com/gnresound and share their “hearing” stories, whether they are stories of hearing loss or simply about how great it is to be able to hear. You can also tweet your photos and tag with @gnresoundus and @lipreadingmom.

 

I was able to interview Shanna to find out a little more about her experiences:

Looking back, did you notice any problems before going to the doctor, besides the immediate problems that spurred the visit? 

Before I was diagnosed with progressive hearing loss in 2001, I experienced high-pitched ringing in both my ears. As I held my newborn son in a quiet room, I heard bells ringing inside my ears. The audiologist later told me this was caused by tinnitus, often a sign of hearing loss. I was 27 years old.

 

What inspired you to start blogging about it? 

Grief is a common side effect of hearing loss. I experienced denial at first, followed by shock, anger, depression, and eventual acceptance. Blogging about this kind of loss was therapeutic in that I wasn’t keeping these emotions bottled up. As I wrote, I processed my feelings and attempted to understand them. As a bonus, my blogging took place for the world to see---so it could inform others who may or may not have first-hand knowledge of hearing loss. LipreadingMom.com is my way of sharing the insight I learn along the way. 

Why did you finally decide to get hearing aids after lip reading for so long?

The first stage of hearing loss---denial---affected me for two years. I refused to get hearing aids at first because I didn’t want anyone to know I had a loss. The hearing aids weren’t attractive with my short hairstyle at the time, so I thought. I was also a working mom. If my boss saw the hearing aids, would my job be in jeopardy? Would I be judged for my inability to hear well?

The final straw was when I could no longer hear the doorbell or phone ring. I would be in a quiet house, and my two-year-old son at the time would have to alert me to these sounds. When the smoke alarm accidentally went off, I couldn’t hear its high-pitched blare. That scared me. Because I had learned that hearing aids could help in these vital situations, I finally purchased them after struggling so long without them. I write about this initial reluctance to wear hearing aids in my memoir Confessions of a Lip Reading Mom (CrossRiverMedia.com, to be released January 2013). I also showcase my acceptance of hearing aids in my LipreadingMom.com Campaign “Show Me Your Ears,” which features photos of people’s ears from around the world. 

Do the hearing aids you use sound like what you remember things sounding like?

When I first put the hearing aids in, I noticed that my voice echoed! Environmental sounds with very high-frequency pitches are what I am most unable to hear without hearing aids. When I wear them, these sounds can be almost too shrill to handle. Over time, I’ve had my hearing aids adjusted to accommodate my listening environment. 

What is your favorite sound to hear?

I love to hear my three children (ages 11, 8, and 5) laughing, especially if that sound is coming from another part of the house. For so long, I couldn’t hear my kids laugh, cry, or talk unless I was standing less than 10 feet away. My ReSound Verso hearing aids that I began wearing in 2012 allow me to hear more sounds from far away. What a gift it is to hear!

Fell free to share your hearing loss stories - you, a friend, or family member. You can also learn more about hearing loss.