Hearing Loss Anecdotes -
What Do You Miss Most with Hearing Loss? page 1

What do we miss? The responses varied from Mike Arleth's succinct, "conversation and music" to responses long enough to be articles.

Intimacy seems to be important to everyone, whether in a marriage/love relationship, friendship or family relationship. We seem to want to be connected. It seems to me from talking to people, reading the responses and the posts to the list I'm on that people really do need what other people can give such as understanding, companionship, support, exchange of ideas, thoughts and feelings as well as the pleasure of connecting with someone and learning that person. Some of the nicest and softest ways to express intimacy are lost to us and are one of the most regretted effects of hearing loss.

Ian Boucher said, "My biggest, deepest disappointment is in missing the intimacy of the whisper, murmur, tone of voice and the subtle variations that are more than just words!" Dorothy and Doug Black miss "pillow talk." Penny Antine writes, "whispers in the night." Linniesue misses "the sound of my husband and son's voices. I am starting to forget what they sound like and that is very difficult for me." One of the things that Eddy in Canada misses is that she "never heard anything coming out of the mouth of my third great grandchild. I baby-sat two of my great grandchildren and enjoyed the sounds of their laughter and first words. I miss the sweet cooing sounds." E. D. Everett wrote, "In the future, I will miss all the words that my grandson will want to share with me once, but not over and over again." Janice Lee Bofinger misses her family's voices. These are the things that give deeper meaning and flavor to our relationships. I wonder if it makes it harder to sustain loving relationships when these spices of intimacy are missing.

There are other things missed or never known and in one unusual situation, hearing for a month after not hearing and losing the hearing again. It brought the following insight.

Curtis Dickinson of Hearing Loss Help Company wrote, "I was born with a 60-90 dB loss. But in the 80's I had surgery that restored my hearing for one month. The most exciting thing about hearing at that time was people. Their voices were all unique. Their voices added to who they were. There was personality to each voice, like a musical lilt in some cases, a buoyant lilt in others. I could recognize a person by their voice without even looking at them. That's what I miss most."

Ellen Luse wrote, "I don't 'miss' anything because I never heard it to begin with, but I wish I could hear rain on the rooftop before it begins pounding hard. People say it is such a nice sound, lightly pitter-pattering on the rooftop. I would like to hear the softer sounds of life, whispers, waterfalls in the distance, leaves in the wind." Julia Beadles, who has always been deafened suggested the question could have been worded differently saying, "It's not like I was going around and dropped my glasses or my contacts and said, "Oh my, I just lost my glasses, I'd better look on the ground and find them. -- I'm not like a person who just lost their hearing, then they are always trying to find it - buying expensive hearing aids that may or may not deliver the goods as advertised, or buying the Cochlear Implant system and all that it entails, etc., etc. The older I get and not having a decent hearing aid, the less I'm able to "learn" how to process all those strange sounds that I would then "hear" through the SqawkBox (hearing aid, ha ha) and have no clue what those sounds mean, how to order those sounds into my consciousness."..."So anyway, this is all just one aspect of it that I can think of, although there may, in fact, be other things that I "miss" mostly because I've never gotten to do them in the first place, because I never could hear - like whistle or participate in conversations with other hearing women whose voices I now can't hear because they are too quiet and too high in the frequency for me to hear."

I really enjoyed the response from Shirley Zener, Princess Diode, who said ; "I miss living a life free of gadgets for hearing loss. Carrying a purse is a drag, but where else can I stash my spare HA batteries and my hearing aid itself if I wanna take it out? I miss living free of the financial costs of hearing loss. My insurance didn't pay for 99% of my hearing aid. "I" paid for it and after the stupid thing wears out in a few years, I have to pay to replace it at the same or higher cost. I miss being able to watch a non-captioned television show or movie. Some shows that appear interesting are not captioned so they are passed over in favor of a dull show with captions or a good book."

Surprisingly enough, financial cost and gadgets weren't brought up by anyone else. This surprised me because it is so difficult to find an ALD that works for your hearing loss. Hearing loss is such an individual thing and past a certain point, hearing aids alone are just not enough.

Also mentioned was conversation, interaction with others, social life, music, anxiety and other things. Music was one of the most frequent and one on which people seemed passionate. There is no doubt music has power. One power is the ability to make us respond to it. It can make us happy, sad, uplifted, or inspired. Music is to the soul and heart what water and food are to the body. My favorite, long dead, singer-song writer wrote of a man who didn't know how well he sang but it made him feel happy and good and complete and so he sang. But what if you can no longer hear music or the words to a song or what if music is distorted?

Penny Antine missed "Music with all the highs and lows and harmonies I can't hear any more." Linniesue wrote, "I also miss music. My commute to work was about an hour and I would crank up my CDs and sing the entire way there and home. Then when I got home, while cooking dinner or cleaning house, my stereo would be blasting out my favorite tunes." Eddy from Canada said, "Since I played several instruments myself, I miss the sound of beautiful music. When I see the birds, I am reminded of imitating them with my whistling. It gave me joy that is missed nowadays."

My own hearing loss is severe. I can still hear music and live alone so I can play it loud enough to hear it but I can't understand the words to new songs so I find myself living with known music so my brain can fill in the words and subtleties, or with classical music without words. I love words and the different ways in which they can be used. I love how they fit together and how a tone or inflection can change their meaning. I've always been fascinated with the way music added to them can change and empower them. I would love to be able to hear the words to songs but it is no longer possible without a great deal of effort, trial and error or outside help. I love story songs and the way the words and music work together. I miss the music I will never know.

Rhonda Otis said, "I wish I could understand the words to music." Sommer Lawrence agreed with her, "I wish we could hear words to music but I listen to it while driving and I don't have to understand every word they're saying." Mary J. Seymour adds, " I would love to be able to hear the words to music. I can hear the tunes to old songs if I can recognize the song. On musical programs on TV I love it when they caption the words. On some familiar songs to which I never knew the words before, I am surprised at the words."

As number one of what is missed, Lassell Comegys put "Music, my one love. I can't hear the tone or melody from any kind of musical instrument. I had a Junior Choir that I trained for several years and I had to give that up. I played the organ in church as a substitute and I had to give that up. Trying to listen to a symphony is a total loss. Music has become a noise. I can sing hymns that I know after hearing the first line sung to get the pitch. Music or lack of it, has become a great loss." Trudi Coakley agrees saying, "I can no longer appreciate music which sounds mostly like noise to me because of the distortion." While Suzanne Jeffery said, "As for understanding the words to music, popular music is very hard to understand even for those with perfect hearing, or so I have been told. With singers at concerts, it depends on how well they enunciate." Jim from Montpelier, Vermont contributes, "Music - I still hear music somewhat but I enjoy oldies the most because they bring back memories of years past. The oldies I hear no longer bring back memories because they don't sound the same. I ask my wife if that is the original singer and most of her replies are, "Yes."

Cynthia from Orlando, Florida said, "The most I miss about hearing loss is music." Louise (Tanya Martelli) misses music among other things, listed later. "Hearing the actual words in a song" comes from Joann Reitenour of Birmingham SHHH. Shirley Duggan with the same group said simply, "I miss hearing music." E. D. Everett wrote, "Music is a passion but I rarely listen to the classical music as I used to, for it doesn't sound the same."

Martha in Houston misses "The ability to hear orchestral (or other) music in entirety. If I know a piece of music, I can put in what I can't hear; if it is atonal in nature, I haven't a clue beyond the major voice range. Although I must relate an experience that was pure bliss; had the opportunity to hear a newly established symphony in a studio with marvelous acoustics and read the score that was computerized and synchronized with the music. Now I want to start agitating for published scores along with concerts. Tee Hee." Jo Gunnerson shared, "I especially miss most my enjoyment of music now taken away. I used to be a singer and I can't do that anymore. I had a passion for good choral music and now I can't even enjoy that. The higher frequencies are gone and I am still trying to make sense out of hearing just the lower voices."

We end the music section with this answer from Jan Christensen. "For me, it's music. I studied music in school (grammar and junior/senior high) and I love music. It has been distorted for me for about five years. Fortunately I just got some new hearing aids which have a special program for music which uncompressed the sounds I get to the whole spectrum. Most aids compress sounds, I found out, so we can understand speech better. Now with earphones, I can hear music much better. I also miss movies (haven't gone in over fifteen years) and being able to hear at large meetings or in large groups without assistive devices is almost impossible. -- But only the loss of music can make me cry."