Hello, and Happy Deaf Awareness Week! I hope you’re doing ok at this strange and worrying time. Isolating is hard for everyone, but can be even harder if you’re deaf.
The theme of this year’s Deaf Awareness Week is ‘Acquired Deafness’ which simply means you lost your hearing at some point during your life, rather than being born deaf.
It’s a lot more common than you might think. It happens to people of all ages and often there isn’t any explanation for it. It happened to me in my 30s.
I was a busy working mum with two teenage children. It was a very gradual process of realising I could only hear the kids if they were close to me and I could see their faces.
They complained I had the TV or music too loud!
At work I started having difficulty on the phone. It seemed as if everyone mumbled! If only they would speak up! And slow down !
I went on a training course and couldn’t follow the tutor. Talking to my colleagues I found that none of them were having any difficulty.
But still I didn’t think it was anything to do with me. The air con was too loud, and the trainer had a strong accent!
It’s hard to believe now that I didn’t realise I was losing my hearing. But I didn’t notice the gradual changes over a few years.
I was already lip reading – it’s not perfect but it does help.
Eventually I thought I should go to the doctors, and finding my ears were clear he referred me for a hearing test.
I had no understanding of what would happen next. I did think it strange that there were long gaps of time in between the tones played in my ear.
But nothing prepared me for the shock of the audiologist saying. ‘Yes , you have a significant hearing loss, would you like to try hearing aids ? ‘
I was 39 years old. Since then my hearing loss has progressed to the point where I’m now severely to profoundly deaf with some hearing in only the lowest frequencies.
Today I use a range of technology and have support at work and home.
Working with DeafPlus introduced me to spending time with people who use BSL, and last year I started learning. I’ve almost finished my level 1. I love learning to communicate with friends at DeafPlus- who are really helpful and supportive too!
With my new found BSL skills I’m especially looking forward to watching Gavin Lilley’s stand up comedy show on deafPLUS Facebook page this Wednesday at 8pm!!
By far the most important thing for me to be able to understand speech is the clarity and pace of the speech itself, and the external surroundings.
When I met my husband in 2002 I couldn’t hear him at all. My hearing is much worse now but I can now hear him even when I’ve taken my aids out.
He’s adapted his speaking voice to living with me. Just raised the volume slightly and slowed it down. He’s still a southerner ! -so we do still have misunderstandings – but mostly we do ok.
This is really what Deaf Awareness Week is all about. Getting the message out to people about how they can help deaf people to communicate and be part of everyday activities.
Whether it’s at work or with the family there are some simple things everyone can do- you can find out more on our websites – deafplus.org and our recently launched BSL advice hub at deafplus.info.
DeafPlus has been providing support to people with hearing loss for almost 50 years. In 2015 we launched our award-winning BSL advice line, so we can now help people across the UK, and deafplus.info builds significantly upon that achievement.
Perhaps you or someone you know is starting to think they might be losing their hearing. It is a shock and it is upsetting whatever your age.
It can be isolating and frightening.
The first step is to have a test. You can do this online or by phone at first if you like. At the moment you’ll have to wait to see an audiologist until the lockdown is over.
So that gives you a little while to think about it. Talk to people about it and prepare yourself. Why not talk to one of the DeafPlus advisers?
If this has made you realise you’re struggling, in whatever way, we’re here to help.
Stay safe.
Sandra became deaf 20 years ago. After taking early retirement from a career in Local Government, Sandra wanted to give back and help support deaf people. Sandra comes with a wealth of experience of being a Senior Manager, and it is these skills that make her an ideal Chair of deafPLUS – a role that involves management and oversight across an entire organisation.
Sandra is passionate about breaking down the barriers that many deaf people face in accessing employment, navigating the benefits system, accessing housing, higher education, social services and all the vital ingredients of life including social activities such as theatre and cinema, sports and other leisure activities. Sandra is proud to play her part in supporting deafPLUS’s work nationally.
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Hartmut Teuber
May 6, 2020
I used the expression “acquiring/acquired deaf” instead of “becoming deaf” some 30 years ago in a German Deaf Discussion Forum. The German word I used was “taub erworben”. This was in the sense of “immersion into Being Deaf and acquiring the associated culture”, as the deaf German writer Otto F. Kruse, deafened at the age of six, in his autobiography in 1878, described his “becoming Deaf” upon entering a school for the deaf. I received a heavy flack from two individuals who were deafened as young adults, who felt insulted of this notion and accused me of cruelly lacking empathy for their pain of losing hearing.
As part of Deaf Awareness, it is important to spread the notion among the population that “to be deaf is OK” and “be welcomed” as an enrichment by the humanity. Read Exodus 4:10 and think profoundly what it means!
Terence Paget
May 6, 2020
I, too, have an acquired hearing loss. For me, this became apparent in or around 1990 and became progressively (with age) and bilaterally worse. I would mention that, in my late teens, I attended a three-day assessment course (the last day of which, for those who got that far, was all medical): this was for military flight-deck assessment – I would have been a pilot had I stayed in the forces. I passed – at that time of my life, my hearing and eyesight were perfect. Life happens, and that is where I am now! Deaf in both ears, with a quite recent CI in one ear.
With the different things I have done to better enable me to communicate (BSL lessons – reached Level 1-and-a-half! – and lip-reading classes (about three years worth)), I have made the effort to do my bit to “make reasonable adjustments” for my hearing loss: it would be nice if those who have a legal obligation to do so did their bit too.
With all of this, if there is one feature that I have come to realize, it is that becoming deafened leads to an unexpected level of loneliness. It’s not a matter of having people around me (I am the eldest of a large family of siblings and their children). But a lot of noise is as bad as no noise so far as not hearing is concerned. I suppose the long and short of all that is that, for me anyway, self-isolation in terms of avoiding vocal contact is a near-norm. I doubt I am alone. I don’t “suffer” in silence – a loss of hearing and a deterioration in sight is quite normal for many as one ages: it’s life, get on with it.
There is, however, one thing that my disability has taught me: not all disabilities are hidden, with some being physically disfiguring. But, whatever the form the disability may take and whether hidden or not, it cannot be assumed that that disability reflects the wholeness and mental ability of what’s inside. In short, I am happy to live with myself and, disorientating as it is at present, the current self-isolation requirements are not as onerous for some as they are on others.
Terence Paget
May 7, 2020
I agree entirely with this author’s sentiment. “Life” and the living of it doesn’t stand still. Or, to cite the refrain in the John Lennon song (although I don’t think the original line was his – I stand to be corrected on that), “Life is what happens to you while you are making other plans”. For many of us who have had to acclimatize ourselves to a hearing loss, whether due to injury, illness, or, as in my own case, ageing, it happens and, in that context, is “normal”.
In this latter context I well recall the ‘eureka’ moment I had some years ago when I re-found some NHS/RNID (as it then was) statistics. So far as age-related hearing loss was concerned, those stats, slightly rounded but not distorted, could be readily summarised with the following numeric associations: 60% of this aged 60 and over have a hearing loss; it is 70% at age 70 and above; 80% at 80 and above. Being, at that time, in my early 60s, it changed my life and, especially, my outlook on my life – having a hearing loss at that age was normal! I was normal for my age! I can say that, on the day that realization hit me (and it did ‘hit’ hard), I “came out”! I have a hearing loss and, for my age, I am normal!
I note the inferences in Hartmut’s response to those who are or who become deaf/deafened at an early age. Believe me, please, I really do empathize with such people and their immediate families. But (there is always a “But”, isn’t there?!?), these things do happen and the strength of that individual and their families is in how they adjust to it rather than lament its intrusion on the societally-accepted “norms”.
Hartmut Teuber
May 8, 2020
The “normality” of becoming deaf, not acquiring deafness, is what you seem to talk about. The notion of “normality” is what is MOST disturbing. Deafness just happens. It is NATURAL (not normal, not according to the statistical norm, it simply EXISTS and IS in the nature or part of God’s design, not a deviation of the ideal of the human perfection), as Exodus 4:10 tells us, but so far no rabbinical scholar, nor any Christian scholar have taught, nor even commented upon it! They even preach that deafness is abnormality, and would not exist in a “perfect” world. They would even say to us that in Heaven upon our death, we will be HEARING like everyone and join in the choir singing VOCALLY “Halleluja” in praise to God.
The adjustment to change as sung by Johnny Lennon is “OK”. But in the utmost abstraction as needed for acquiring deafness, I doubt he was thinking of that change.
Deafness IS NOT an intrusion on the society!!! It must be THE ACCEPTED part of Humanity. Period!!! It is the audist society, including yourself when you were hearing, that INTRODUCES with the conception of normality and misconception of normality as naturalness. This is exactly what Deaf Awareness needs to address, With apologies to Dante (in “Inferno”), disavow your preconceived conceptions when you enter a realm completely different from yours! And I add, cherish the new experiences underlying a non-audist humanity.
Acquiring deafness is learning this different humanity.