© 2008
To Hear or Not to Hear
by Pearl Feder L.C.S.W
I've been wearing my hearing aid consistently now for 12 years. Without my aid, I have little speech discrimination.
One day while listening to the radio in the car, I pulled out my hearing aid due to an ear itch. Oh how I hate those itchy ears! They drive me bonkers and it always seems to occur when I'm enjoying some music or listening to something or someone.
Anyway, with the hearing aid out, I suddenly realized I could not hear the music ... at all. I don't know why I was surprised by this? I guess I've always been in the habit of pulling out the aid at the end of the day and enjoying the silence in the house or maybe it was that I enjoyed not hearing all the noises, not sure sometimes which it is.
Getting back though, when I realized I was not hearing the music, I suddenly felt a touch of anxiety. I opened the windows and listened intently for the sounds of life. I looked around and felt as though I were watching everything in front of me through a glass bubble. Everything sounded so distant and garbled.
I finally arrived home and decided not to put the aid back in. I needed more time to absorb what I was feeling. I sat out on the deck and looked around me. I felt the sunshine and the cool easy breeze that was drifting back and forth from the trees onto my face. I walked up to my container plants and smelled the flowers with my eyes closed. I listened for the sound of the beach two blocks away but could only hear my tinnitus. I looked around me and realized there were so many things hearing people take for granted and so many things that as an individual with a hearing loss I miss out on in wearing my aid.
Granted, I am not deaf to the point where I hear nothing with an aid and therefore have the advantage of choices. Whether to hear or not to hear. I guess I never really saw my lack of hearing as an intrusion on my life. Hearing the toilet flush was not something I got excited about the first time I heard it with the aid on. The screeching sounds a car makes on a sudden brake, the planes coming in for a landing at Kennedy airport which I also tend to feel through my house, or the disgruntled cashier who hates her job, or even the sounds of flatulence. I can certainly do without these.
All in all, my life is filled with many sounds but at the end of the day, when I take the aid out and put it to rest until the next day, I feel a sense of calm move from my head to my toes. A sense of well being I don't usually get when I wear my aid. Lately, when I feel annoyed, anxious or even lonely, I've taken to leaving the aid out. It gives me the time to chill out and find my path on what sometimes can be a very bumpy road.