Day 4, Sunday 16th June
Dan (an ex police officer) questions Sam about his hearing and how much he can hear.
Sam explains he is 70% deaf and from birth. Dan asks how much his hearing aids boosts his hearing, but Sam seems thrown and says that he had never been asked that before and didn’t know how to answer. Dan then asks that if he took his hearing aids out does how much less hearing does he have. Again, he didn’t seem to be able to answer.
Sam mentions he can lipread Dan and Gina fine, but doesn’t feel the others all need to know how deaf he is. He sometimes struggles with the conversations in the distant or bed to bed but overall he is ok.
Sam doesn’t seem comfortable talking about his hearing loss even though Dan was genuinely interested and not patronising (in my opinion).
Eleswhere in the House, Michael continues his puppet role giving his “opinion” on the other housemates “in secret” in the diary room knowing that they are watching him! Some interesting reactions from the housemates as he bitches on about them. It causes repercussions throughout the evening as the housemates discuss their thoughts about Michael and his revelations in the diary room about them.
They are unable to discuss it with him as they know he is doing the nominations but they don’t know that he knows that they know! More troubles for Gina as Jemima made several comments that could be deemed to be racist, and she was called into the Diary Room for a formal warning.
Todays highlights show was shorter due to a live segment in which Michael gave his nominations. Live, Michael was requested to give his nominations in front of the housemates. Of course these are not his nominations, but are voted for by the public!
His first nomination was for Gina as he doesn’t think she does things in the house. His second nomination was for Dexter because all he does is talk about himself. The third and final nomination was for Sallie because she is always fighting to be centre of attention and he doesn’t like it. This gets quite an angry reaction from Sallie and causes quite a stir. As Dexter and Gina remain quiet, Sallies reaction actually justifies the reason for nomination!
Eviction is on Friday.
The Limping Chicken’s Big Brother correspondent is Michelle Hedley. Michelle is a Geordie originally from Tyneside, now living just inside the border of Northumberland. She loves discovering music and also has a love of the theatre, especially musicals. She’s a fan of science-fiction, watches anything on TV that is subtitled, and is now reliving her childhood renting DVDs! She is also a geocacher, and is on Twitter as @Shelle02
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Sian Siner
June 18, 2013
I have exactly the same problem, being unable to tell people how much the hearing aids boost my hearing and how much less hearing I have without my hearing aids (I have 60% hearing loss), it is interesting to see that though people are genuinely interested and not patronising it can be putting us on the spot with questions like that.
Robert Mandara
June 18, 2013
If Sam says that he has a 70% hearing loss, he doesn’t understand how sound is measured to start with. Sound is logarithmic and cannot be expressed as a meaningful percentage. If he has a 70dB hearing loss (as is likely) then that’s what he should state. 70dB is NOT 70%.
Sadly Sam’s not alone in making this mistake. Plenty of deaf organisations which should know better continue to do the same.
Michelle Hedley
June 18, 2013
I myself have 88 decibel loss and no idea what that represents percentage wise. I am still trying to work out how deaf Sam is – am in no doubt he IS deaf, but to what extent? Agree about lack of knowledge organisations have about measuring losses.
CraigO
June 18, 2013
I don’t think he is necessarily confused at all. He could mean 70% as in “I understand what is said 7 out of 10 times” or “I feel I miss out what is said 30% of the time” or even “I understand about seven words in 10”.
It can be a more useful/practical way of conveying the degree of your hearing loss to a non-deaf person/non-audiologist than “I have a loss of 76dB at 4kHz” or “a severe loss in my right ear”. It can help them to realise just how much you struggle sometimes.
I’m sure it’s perfectly possible for two people with the same dB loss on paper to cope with it in very different ways. Likewise an individual may have no difficulty in some situations while suffering in others even where the circumstances appear the same. After all, how many people assume you’re coping fine in a lecture (maybe understanding just 15% of what is said) as you had no difficulties with a one-2-one conversation earlier?
More so when you introduce hearing aids and cochlear implants to the mix – after all do you say I have “57dB loss without my aid” or “with my aid, my loss is closer to 10dB when tested”.
Of course, a plain percentage isn’t the full story either. After all it’s not much help understanding 15% of what is said if that 15% is just words like “and”, “the”, etc.
wix4ever
June 18, 2013
When people ask me how much difference my hearing aids make, I normally look at my watch and say, “Just gone half past four”. That normally shuts them up.
Angela
June 18, 2013
For hearing people, who are not Teachers of the Deaf or (Hearing-Speech) Specialists, labels like “mild hearing loss” (20-40dB), “moderate hearing loss” (41-55dB), “moderately severe hearing loss” (56-70dB) “severe hearing loss” (71-90dB) and “profound hearing loss” (over 91dB) are easiest to understand. To get this, one uses the measurement of Pure Tone Audiometry (PTA) reading of the better ear (“good ear”). The shaded part at the top of PTA is how much people with normal hearing can hear – so the graph line closest to that shaded part is your “better ear”. With regards to how much aided hearing one has, one needs to look at one’s Pure Tone Audiometry (audiogram) showing Aided-hearing (usually marked with the capital letter “A”) using dB readings again. I hope this helps readers to make sense of their audiograms and how much hearing loss and aided hearing one has.
sirgarg
June 21, 2013
When I am awake and in concentration mode I can make out my fire angel going off without my hearing aids but understanding conversation or watching television I find very difficult..The lack of hearing scope can be at any level and its possible to hear a mouse squeeking..yet crossing the road is a problem.
If like most I know have a grasp of the engrish language and together with lip reading and detective work can work out whats been said..some of the time?
So to ask the question “what can you hear without hearing aids”, I find quite simple, the answer being..On a good day, in an empty room..not much!
ach
September 12, 2013
dan you battyboy mind you’re own