My Hearing Journey

The Beginning

May is Speech and Hearing Month in Canada. I am one of 9% of Canadians aged 20 to 39 with audiometrically measured hearing loss. This means that in January of 2020, I went for my first hearing test, and as I often joke, I “failed” my Audiogram.

According to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, the audiogram is a graph showing the results of a pure-tone hearing test. It will show how loud sounds need to be at different frequencies for you to hear them. The audiogram shows the type, degree, and configuration of hearing loss. Audiograms are an important part of a hearing test, but moving on.

I noticed many years that a co-worker who would constantly lean over my desk to whisper the latest gossip to me was one of the hardest parts of my day. I almost never knew what she was trying to communicate to me. After many, many months of me smiling and nodding - I noticed other people standing beside me could hear this coworker just fine (that or they to were faking it). It got me to thinking - what if something is wrong. I went to my family physician and explained my concerns. I was given a requisition to get my hearing tested. I figured it wouldn't say much but at least I could stop wondering if something was wrong. After my first hearing test in January 2020, I was sent to see an ENT (Ear, Nose & Throat) Specialist. Dr. Wong has a lovely human whom I hang out with once a year since October 2021. Dr. Wong informed me that I have a form of bilateral (both ears), genetic hearing loss called “cookie-bite” hearing loss which is a type of sensorineural (sen·so·ri·neu·ral) hearing loss.

If you’re still reading and thinking, what does that mean - imagine how I felt those first few days. Essentially, I have mild to moderate hearing loss in both ears that don’t allow me to hear human voices well or sometimes barely at all.

I hear the sounds of f, s and th quite well, however most of the vowels and lots of other consonants are lost between someone’s mouth and my ears/brain. For the last 3-4 years I’ve been researching and reading to try and understand what this means overall, but more importantly what this means for me.

The Present

Over the holidays this past year I found I was suffering from a lot of hearing/listening fatigue.

It is said that approximately 20% of communication between humans is verbal communication. This may not sound like much but when you don’t hear between 50-75% of what people are verbally saying to you, it seems A LOT harder.

Okay, so here I was struggling away. I advocated for myself to go to see my ENT Specialist, Dr. Wong, earlier than my yearly review. That was Wednesday, May 15th where I completed another audiogram, another visit to discuss symptoms, struggles, etc. Two days later I had an appointment with a Hearing Instrument Specialist and I walked out with two RIC (receiver in canal) hearing aids.

Hearing Aids

Wearing hearing aids for the first time is incredibly overwhelming! There are things that make sounds in the world that I never knew could be soo loud. Things like making the bed every morning, the sound of sheets ruffling is wildly loud to me.

Some sounds are that much more beautiful - rain storms, my kitty cat purring on the other side of the couch, etc.

I still don’t catch every part of a conversation 100% of the time. But I can hear MORE in general without a doubt.

Ultimately, my goal is two-fold, one that more people over the age of 30 book a hearing test and second that hearing-loss is a little less stigmatized.

I'll leave you with some interesting statistics I've recently come across in my own research.

Recent Facts on Hearing & Cognition

I work with aging adults and as such try to stay up to date with research and information that is presented in the medical community and to this field of individuals. As such, I unintentionally heard about the disadvantage of having untreated hearing loss.

For example, hearing impairment may directly contribute to accelerated rates of atrophy in parts of the brain that process sound (I’M SO SORRY, COULD YOU REPEAT THAT PLEASE? 2023).

Additionally, “while untreated hearing loss has been linked with an increased likelihood of dementia, new research suggests that using hearing aids cuts the risk of cognitive decline in at-risk individuals by nearing half over three years” (Forever Young: The Impact of Ageism on Your Health 2023).

“A 2011 study of some 600 older adults found that those with hearing loss at the beginning of the study were more likely to develop dementia than adults with normal hearing. In fact, the more severe the hearing loss, the more likely they were to develop dementia; volunteers with mild, moderate and severe loss were two, three and five times more likely to develop dementia than those with normal hearing.”
(I’M SO SORRY, COULD YOU REPEAT THAT PLEASE? 2023)