It’s a Noisy World Alright

by Donna Poole

Just smile and wave boys, smile and wave. That’s what I and my kind do because we don’t know any other proper response. We likely have no idea what you just said.

I don’t know how long I’ve been hard of hearing, probably a long while. I do know we’ve had a good friend for over forty-five years, and I’ve never heard more than half of what he’s said. Maybe that’s why we’re such good friends!

Did you know that hard of hearing people are more likely than the general population to get early dementia? I think I know why. Without meaning to, we withdraw little by little into our own worlds and let conversation flow on around us. It’s easier than asking, “What did you say?” or, “Would you repeat that?” every two minutes. We catch fragments of conversations and respond when we can.

Time passes, and we don’t realize how bad our hearing loss has gotten. Until something out of the ordinary makes us face reality.

For me, it was not being able to hear my oncologist and many of my chemotherapy nurses. I do ask them to repeat. Otherwise, I wouldn’t know if my oncologist said, “Call in Hospice,” or, “Don’t eat popsicles.” That’s a difference I might need to know!

So, John and I had the hearing aid conversation. We don’t have the Medicare and the supplementary program that pays for hearing aids, but we don’t want to change it. You wouldn’t either if you were us! It has paid every cent of a brain surgery, ICU stays, other minor surgeries and hospitalizations, monthly IVIg treatments that cost about seven grand each, and all my chemotherapy. Our insurance agent told us never to change it.

Without insurance help, we were on our own to pay for whatever hearing aids we bought, so I started researching. John hates to hear this analogy, but I sometimes ask him how much money he wants to put into an old and perhaps dying horse!

I saw an ad on my phone for inexpensive hearing aids available online and asked my Facebook friends for opinions. I got lots of ideas from them, and something totally unexpected. One of God’s earth angels we’ve known for years lives in a nearby town. He saw my Facebook post and messaged me. He had the kind of hearing aids I’d asked about in an upgraded version. He’d worn them only two weeks and decided to go with something else. The company refused to let him return them. You guessed it; he gave them to me. I wore them for the first-time last night.

We ate in the living room, as we do most nights. Not only could I hear every word said in the living room, but I could also hear conversations in the kitchen when people when back for seconds! It was amazing, and overwhelming.

I always brag about my wonderful family so I’m sorry to tell you this, but they are incredibly noisy. They toss silverware from the island into the sink, and it sounds like bombs exploding. I had to leave the kitchen. One of them has this high piercing whistle. I always enjoyed it pre-hearing aids; I thought it was a quiet, tuneless whistle; at least I could never pick out a tune. When they turn on a light switch in this old house it sounds like a cap gun going off. And their voices are so loud!

They laughed at me. “Wait until the whole family gets together. What are you going to do then?”

I thought about our wonderful family, all twenty-three of us, thirteen grandkids. I know what I’m going to do then. I’m not going to wear my wonderful new hearing aids. I’ve prayed for hearing aids for years, and I’m beyond grateful for these, but like some wise sage said, probably my mom, “There is such a thing as too much of a good thing.”