My Journey

This is nothing dramatic or life saving, it's just a review of the dawning realization that I needed help hearing. In June I got hearing aids and they work.

Like all aging superstars, I didn't think anything was wrong. I could hear. The TV was plenty loud, I could hear birdsong and wind and rain on the skylights. I could hear car noises and sirens. I was constantly frustrated by people who mumbled and actors who garbled all their lines in movies, but that was them, not me. Jim was a particular annoyance with his mutterings.

The frustration was getting frequent, though, and I knew I sounded like an old lady. Don't mutter. Look at me when you're talking. What? Say again? Why can't they make movies that make sense? What's wrong with our TV? Sigh. With the pandemic, a clerk in a mask behind a plexiglass partition was utterly unintelligible.

Then this spring two events made me finally realize I had to do something.

The first -- we watched the movie Knives Out on TV. It's an amusing whodunit with double red herrings and detectives and suspects standing around in the study talking. It was way too loud -- way too loud -- when the music or action shots were on. But I couldn't follow any of the talk. It was like the move was in French. I was lost.

In one scene near the end Chris Evans and Ana de Armas are in a pub at a table. They look at each other and the scene goes on for many minutes with them just looking at each other expressively. Was something going to happen? A romance blooming? A plot hatching? What was the purpose of a such a very long shot of the two of them just sitting at a table looking at each other?

Later Jim said it was the scene where she confesses. The whole story spools out and . . .  I was gobsmacked to learn they were even talking.  The camera had switched back and forth to always be behind the speaker (I guess to capture the reaction shots) so I never saw anyone speaking -- and couldn't hear a single bit of it. That created a bit of a plot hole in the movie.

The second -- a visit with my son in Denver in May. There was no problem when we sat across from each other and talked. But often we were in companionable silence, driving together side by side in his truck, or me reading, him on his phone, and he'd bring something up and I'd say what? and he'd have to repeat it. Every time.

Conversation was a repetitive stutter that was awkward and frustrating. With Jim and me it's just our normal married rhythm to say every single thing twice, but with my son I realized how exhausting it was to double up every conversation.

Those two events led me to my doctor's referral for a hearing test, and yes, it showed I had diminished ability to hear in the conversational range. Vowels were lost to me, consonants morphed. I could hear but not comprehend. 

I'm too young, I wailed. The fix was hearing aids and they are cool. 

They sit over the ear but are nearly invisible. Mine are platinum to match my hair. That matters.

They connect wirelessly to my iPhone for control settings and I get e-mail dings and text notifications and beeps zapped directly into my brain without anyone else hearing it. When the phone rings in my head now, I can answer it without even being near the phone itself, I just talk like the person is in the room and hear the caller in my head. Of course if it's face time I have to go get the phone for the video part.

TV is comprehensible to me as long as it isn't a zany British comedy from the 60s. Conversation flows now, even if the speaker is facing away. Face masks aren't a barrier any more.

But face masks, ugh. I can no longer wear the ones that hook on the ears. The elastic slides under the fine filament that goes from the unit to inside the ear and makes it a very tricky maneuver to untangle everything to get the mask off. 

This is the style that doesn't hook over the ears - - - -  or this box could work too.

I got masks that attach over the head and behind the neck. But I slip both bands behind my neck. The elastic isn't anywhere near the hearing aids but earrings are a problem now. Why do we always have to choose between function and style . . . 

My Covid self-haircut is growing out now. Needs work.

So I'm adjusting and doing well now. Movies are entertaining again and conversations are not so endlessly repetitive.

The doctor made an adjustment to dampen any whistling, but to my dismay, Jim still whistles the theme song to the movie Brazil incessantly throughout the day. I can't find the stop button for that.