On going deaf
At 80 years old I had not considered the possibility of going deaf but now I am struck deaf. Deafness is a disability, a handicap; many of life’s pleasures - conversation, listening to music, birdsong - are largely snatched away. Life closes in round you and, without help, goes quiet. This quiet is unwonted and unwanted. Not a peaceful retreat from the world in old age, it is a nagging loss. A loss which is not immediately obvious to those around you. If you walk into a shop, tapping your way with a white stick, it is at least likely that someone will help you - certainly everyone will know you are blind. The first hint that anyone has that you are deaf is when you say “I am sorry. Would you say that again? I am deaf” The reaction is not always sympathetic.
Deafness, to other people, is a nuisance. How difficult it is to communicate with a deaf person; constant repetition, raised voices. Irritation; give up. People may be saying “Awkward old man; he’s not as deaf as he makes out; hears well enough when he wants to.” Hearing aids? Oh yes, and very clever they are. One in each ear, supplied by the NHS at considerable cost to the taxpayer - £1,500 each ear they say. They fit behind each ear, have a specially cast ear plug to exclude other sounds; they are digital and tuned to match the deficiencies of each ear. Moderate loss, perhaps, at lower frequencies, increasing as they climb higher. Sound is recovered; but a great part of the time it is not meaningful. My sound world now is brittle, shrill and, paradoxically, noisy. To walk along a road in even moderate traffic is to experience noise, constant, unrecognisable noise. The kitchen has become a harsh, clangourous place, where if someone puts a saucepan down on the stove, the sound rings in my head. A boiling kettle excludes conversation
OK, lets go out to lunch. A restaurant is a painful place where other people’s voices swamp those of your companions. So much so that I give up trying. The strain of trying to hear the speech you want through the noise become too much. Hearing aids do have advantages; in a quiet place, a living room say, with no more than two other people present, I can disentangle words, but if the other two turn to speak to each other I shall not understand more than one word in four. There are two people, their faces alive with meaning and I may have no idea what they are saying. I go up to my study and write or look for emails. For me, emails are a good way to communicate. Quick and in writing. Siegfried Sassoon wrote a book called Laughter in the next Room. Sometimes I can tell that it is laughter, but the reason for it is always lost to me. Ordinary casual conversation about the house has become unattainable.
I am not a musician, but for most of my life, say 70 out the 80 years, listening to music has been a source of pleasure. Perhaps more than 70 years - I still have the gramophone record, worn almost smooth, of nursery songs which which we listened to at home. The night before I reported in 1947 to Britannia barracks Norwich to begin National Service I listed to a recording of Beethoven's’ Pathetique sonata; it is still one of the pieces of music, now in memory only, which speak to me of the great European musical tradition which has helped my understanding of the world, helped me towards an understanding of who I am. No longer: all gone. My hearing aids have a special setting for music but it makes little difference. A symphony orchestra, for example, has become a painful cacophony. Birdsong, too, the unbelievable song of a blackbird on a summer’s evening or at dawn - unrecognisable.
As these losses are borne in on me and I realise there is no escape, I turn to experiment; different settings of the hearing aids, asking the skilful people at the hospital to try again to match the curve mapped out on the graph; experimenting with gadgets supplied by the RNID. I have not yet tried an old fashioned ear trumpet but if I find one, I will look and hope. It could just work!
What is to be done? I am only one of millions, some of whom have been waiting for a consultation for a year or more. The consultant calls the condition severe sensorineural deficiency - about ten syllables to say ‘deaf’. Little is known about causes; loss is permanent. For me, many of the signals reaching the brain are so incomplete that they cannot be put back together again. There are systems using induction loops which can help, for example by connection to TV; they are used in railway ticket offices in some taxis and in some concert halls and theatres. They can be helpful by excluding unwanted sounds. But the question remains, can anything be done? Much research is carried out; NHS digital aids are presumably state-of-the-art but they have the shortcomings I have described.
And yet, perhaps there is something.
Searches of the Internet suggest that a limited number of firms is engaged in providing hearing aids. I have built up a picture in my mind, I hope I am wrong, of a hearing aid world which exists within limits determined by its past history and the development cost for what may be seen to be a small market (RNID say there are 9 million people who are deaf or hard of hearing; 50% of people over 60. These are not small numbers.) Improvement within this limited world is seen as linear, progressing from one tweak to the next in an environment where those who commission and those who supply are well known to each other. In such surroundings intuitive leaps seem unlikely and would be inhibited by the perceived capital costs of development.
One of the stumbling blocks could be the miniaturisation required in the belief that people are so embarrassed to be known to be deaf that tiny, in the ear or behind the ear devices are necessary. And yet more people wear spectacles than wear contact lenses. Half the population seems to walk about wearing headphones in order to listen to music. Making things very small costs money; may be they need not be so small.
There are other areas where electronic devices are in everyday use; they are small and very clever. they are to be found in everyday things such as washing machines. Mobile phones are a better example. That small box you hold in your hand can be a phone, a texter, an internet browser, satellite navigation device; it can be used to download music tracks, or as a camera. Tiny devices return pictures from inside our bodies and track the movements of small creatures such as the birds and the bees.
If this larger world of electronics is sought out and enlisted is it not probable that the ingenuity of electronics engineers the world over would produce not merely linear thinking but intuitive leaps? This would mean that the requirements of the deaf need to be more widely known, publicised and understood, seeking out those bright young scientists and engineers working away in garages, small groups excited by possibilities they have glimpsed. Not inhibited by problems of development costs, or the static career structure of a developed industry. Surely to goodness we can do better? We certainly ought to try; then people lke me would no longer sit in the corner of the room like a toothless old dog hoping someone will notice and pat his head.
I accept that knowledge about how the ear works, about the components of complex sounds and how they normally reach the brain, is advanced far beyond my understanding. My appeal may come from ignorance but even so, even so. Many discoveries come when others in the field think they have reached a brick wall. Someone, perhaps from an unlikely direction, sees a way through the wall or of jumping over it, or walking round the ends. The secret is in telling as many people as possible about the problem and how the hearing aid world seems stuck. Those commissioning new work may place advertisements for tenders in techncal magazines round the world. Then perhaps someone will say “Why not try it this way?” And then, after a period of scornful dismissal by those deep in the industry, some may begin to say “Of course, we thought all along that would work.” This wished for new solution might be cheaper too; save the NHS a lot of money.
Then I shall be able to stop growling, come out of my corner and actually talk with my friends again.
Deafness, to other people, is a nuisance. How difficult it is to communicate with a deaf person; constant repetition, raised voices. Irritation; give up. People may be saying “Awkward old man; he’s not as deaf as he makes out; hears well enough when he wants to.” Hearing aids? Oh yes, and very clever they are. One in each ear, supplied by the NHS at considerable cost to the taxpayer - £1,500 each ear they say. They fit behind each ear, have a specially cast ear plug to exclude other sounds; they are digital and tuned to match the deficiencies of each ear. Moderate loss, perhaps, at lower frequencies, increasing as they climb higher. Sound is recovered; but a great part of the time it is not meaningful. My sound world now is brittle, shrill and, paradoxically, noisy. To walk along a road in even moderate traffic is to experience noise, constant, unrecognisable noise. The kitchen has become a harsh, clangourous place, where if someone puts a saucepan down on the stove, the sound rings in my head. A boiling kettle excludes conversation
OK, lets go out to lunch. A restaurant is a painful place where other people’s voices swamp those of your companions. So much so that I give up trying. The strain of trying to hear the speech you want through the noise become too much. Hearing aids do have advantages; in a quiet place, a living room say, with no more than two other people present, I can disentangle words, but if the other two turn to speak to each other I shall not understand more than one word in four. There are two people, their faces alive with meaning and I may have no idea what they are saying. I go up to my study and write or look for emails. For me, emails are a good way to communicate. Quick and in writing. Siegfried Sassoon wrote a book called Laughter in the next Room. Sometimes I can tell that it is laughter, but the reason for it is always lost to me. Ordinary casual conversation about the house has become unattainable.
I am not a musician, but for most of my life, say 70 out the 80 years, listening to music has been a source of pleasure. Perhaps more than 70 years - I still have the gramophone record, worn almost smooth, of nursery songs which which we listened to at home. The night before I reported in 1947 to Britannia barracks Norwich to begin National Service I listed to a recording of Beethoven's’ Pathetique sonata; it is still one of the pieces of music, now in memory only, which speak to me of the great European musical tradition which has helped my understanding of the world, helped me towards an understanding of who I am. No longer: all gone. My hearing aids have a special setting for music but it makes little difference. A symphony orchestra, for example, has become a painful cacophony. Birdsong, too, the unbelievable song of a blackbird on a summer’s evening or at dawn - unrecognisable.
As these losses are borne in on me and I realise there is no escape, I turn to experiment; different settings of the hearing aids, asking the skilful people at the hospital to try again to match the curve mapped out on the graph; experimenting with gadgets supplied by the RNID. I have not yet tried an old fashioned ear trumpet but if I find one, I will look and hope. It could just work!
What is to be done? I am only one of millions, some of whom have been waiting for a consultation for a year or more. The consultant calls the condition severe sensorineural deficiency - about ten syllables to say ‘deaf’. Little is known about causes; loss is permanent. For me, many of the signals reaching the brain are so incomplete that they cannot be put back together again. There are systems using induction loops which can help, for example by connection to TV; they are used in railway ticket offices in some taxis and in some concert halls and theatres. They can be helpful by excluding unwanted sounds. But the question remains, can anything be done? Much research is carried out; NHS digital aids are presumably state-of-the-art but they have the shortcomings I have described.
And yet, perhaps there is something.
Searches of the Internet suggest that a limited number of firms is engaged in providing hearing aids. I have built up a picture in my mind, I hope I am wrong, of a hearing aid world which exists within limits determined by its past history and the development cost for what may be seen to be a small market (RNID say there are 9 million people who are deaf or hard of hearing; 50% of people over 60. These are not small numbers.) Improvement within this limited world is seen as linear, progressing from one tweak to the next in an environment where those who commission and those who supply are well known to each other. In such surroundings intuitive leaps seem unlikely and would be inhibited by the perceived capital costs of development.
One of the stumbling blocks could be the miniaturisation required in the belief that people are so embarrassed to be known to be deaf that tiny, in the ear or behind the ear devices are necessary. And yet more people wear spectacles than wear contact lenses. Half the population seems to walk about wearing headphones in order to listen to music. Making things very small costs money; may be they need not be so small.
There are other areas where electronic devices are in everyday use; they are small and very clever. they are to be found in everyday things such as washing machines. Mobile phones are a better example. That small box you hold in your hand can be a phone, a texter, an internet browser, satellite navigation device; it can be used to download music tracks, or as a camera. Tiny devices return pictures from inside our bodies and track the movements of small creatures such as the birds and the bees.
If this larger world of electronics is sought out and enlisted is it not probable that the ingenuity of electronics engineers the world over would produce not merely linear thinking but intuitive leaps? This would mean that the requirements of the deaf need to be more widely known, publicised and understood, seeking out those bright young scientists and engineers working away in garages, small groups excited by possibilities they have glimpsed. Not inhibited by problems of development costs, or the static career structure of a developed industry. Surely to goodness we can do better? We certainly ought to try; then people lke me would no longer sit in the corner of the room like a toothless old dog hoping someone will notice and pat his head.
I accept that knowledge about how the ear works, about the components of complex sounds and how they normally reach the brain, is advanced far beyond my understanding. My appeal may come from ignorance but even so, even so. Many discoveries come when others in the field think they have reached a brick wall. Someone, perhaps from an unlikely direction, sees a way through the wall or of jumping over it, or walking round the ends. The secret is in telling as many people as possible about the problem and how the hearing aid world seems stuck. Those commissioning new work may place advertisements for tenders in techncal magazines round the world. Then perhaps someone will say “Why not try it this way?” And then, after a period of scornful dismissal by those deep in the industry, some may begin to say “Of course, we thought all along that would work.” This wished for new solution might be cheaper too; save the NHS a lot of money.
Then I shall be able to stop growling, come out of my corner and actually talk with my friends again.
Labels: Deafness
posted by Peter Soar at 4:47 PM
1 Comments:
I hear ya mate.
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