AboutCordell Vail Expertise I would be very happy to try to answer any questions that you may have about things you can do as a hearing impaired person to find a good job or better your education. I have been working with the deaf since 1996. One of the greatest needs seems to be finding help with getting a better education and employment. To try to fill that need, started a FREE deaf job service web page at www.vcaa.com/deafnews/jobs. You can post your résumé there for free. I am also collecting deaf job information, educational opportunities and vocational financial assistance for the hearing impaired from every state and posting it on that web page. Because the ideal employment for some hearing impaired people would be to work at home, I am in the process of writing a book about that and I also post that information on the web page when ever I find it. There is no cost to use the information on the web page and I will be happy to try to answer your questions here as well.
Experience I have been helping the deaf and hearing impaired find work and better education since 1996
Publications www.vcaa.com/deafnews/jobs
Education/Credentials 2 years graduate work at the University Of Utah in Interpersonal Communications
Expert: Cordell Vail Date: 11/22/2006 Subject: hearing problem
Question I don't know what is wrong with me. i test fine on hearing tests but i can't hear people or things around me when there are other noises. example when the tv is on i can hold a conversation with my husband unless he speaks louder than the tv. in a car if the radio is on i can't hear anyone talk in the car when everyone else can hold a conversation. my twin sister is just like me. what is this? why can i only hear the loudest noise and that noise blocks out what ever else is around me?
Answer Amy,
I am not a doctor and I am not an expert in hearing loss so I am not qualified to answer your question.
I can tell you however that I have the exact same problem as you. So my question to you would be what you mean by saying that "you test fine on hearing testes". What kind of hearing tests have you taken? I am really surprised that a professional audiologist would not be able to tell you exactly what your hearing loss is and what it was caused by.
Again I can not give you any advice only tell you what my experience has been.
I lost most of my hearing in Vietnam from loud guns. The part of my hearing that I lost it high frequency. So I can not hear door bells, clocks ticking, most phone ringers or other things with a high pitch. It is very hard for me to hear someone with a quiet voice (which is most women's voices because they are high pitched). I cant understand most little children talking. I can hear them, I just cant understand what they are saying. I cant sing in church any more. I can hear the music but when I sing I can not tell when I am on or off pitch with the music. But other people around me can tell... ha ha ha and so they start looking at me because I am singing off key. So I don't sing any more in church at all. I seem to be able to hear anything that is low pitch like most men's voices. Louder does not necessarily make it easier to understand, just louder. But I do have to have the TV up so loud to understand it that my wife has bought me a set of head phones so she can listen at normal sound level and I can turn the head set up so I can hear AND UNDERSTAND IT.) If I am in a place where people are talking and there is background noise then I can only hear the back ground noise. If I am in a car and people are talking all I can hear is the road noise and the people sound like they are mumbling. I can hear them but cant understand them. If a fan is going in the room I can only hear the fan but normally can not understand what the people talking about.
So I have had hearing tests by professional audiologists, and they were able to tell me exactly what hearing range I can hear and what hearing range I can not hear. They told me that I could get hearing aids that are very high tech that will transpose the high pitch sounds down to low pitch sounds so I can hear them and it will cut out the back ground noise. Price... $5,000. I thought that was a lot of money but maybe worth it... but then they said, "EACH". My right ear is much worse than my left ear because that is the side the gun was on when it went off. I have tried regular conventional hearing aids (borrowed my mothers for a day) and they only make what I can already hear louder and rattling noises like paper rattling or people banging on things almost unbearable. I simply can not afford $10,000 for high tech hearing aids so I have learned to live with it. I have also tried to learn to lip read. It is not the perfect solution but it really helps a lot. I am not very good at it. If you turn the sound off on the TV and I can only see their lips I can not understand anything they are saying. But when I can hear them a little but cant understand very well what they are saying, if I can see their lips moving, then I usually can understand what they are saying. So I do that a lot when with friends or in groups. But it makes people nervous when they realize you are staring at their lips when they are talking to you. It makes them think there is something wrong with their lips. So if I realize they are feeling that, I tell them I am lip reading.
The hearing loss has become quite a problem for me at work because I can not hear well in meetings so I miss a lot of stuff. It has also become quite a social barrier because people get sick of you asking them to repeat what they said, especially 3 or 4 times. So when I don't hear I just pretend I did (and that gets me into a lot of trouble too when they ask a question an I don't realize they asked me a question. I also have a hard time knowing how loud I am talking so some times I am talking too loud. Other times I will be talking to someone (especially in a group) and they just turn and start talking to some one else. At first I thought it was because they did not like me. Then I realized they did not hear me and so did not realize I was talking to them.
In groups I never try to participate because I don't know how loud to talk and normally when I try to interject my thoughts the group just ignores me because they don't hear me and I don't dare talk louder because then I would feel like I was yelling.
So I have become pretty much a recluse. I used to be really out going and the life of the party. Now I just stay to my self pretty much so I don't have that problem in public.
And lastly it has made quite a strain on my family relationships because of the constant asking my family members to repeat things (which is very irritating and you get the rolling the eyeballs back or the humph sound in their breathing as they have to repeat it AGAIN)..and it causes a lot of hurt feelings when I talk and don't realize I am talking too loud or they ask me to repeat what I said louder because they say they did not hear me and then they think I am yelling at them. That has made family life very interesting.
I don't know if you have any of those same experiences and I don't know what the solution is except $10,000 hearing aids. That is why I have started working with the deaf. I love that they don't notice that I am hard of hearing. My hands talk just as loud or quiet as I want them to when I am talking to a deaf person. My wife and I have both learned ASL and we work with the deaf a lot. If my hearing loss continues to progress I assume some day instead of working with the deaf I will be one of them.
I don't know if telling you that helps at all, but at least you know now that someone else is likely in the same situation as you.
I hope you can find a better solution to your hearing problem than I have. I have not of course given you any advice but at least if you need to talk to someone about it you know now that I am willing to talk to you and listen to how you feel.
Cordell Vail
Seattle, WA
www.vcaa.com/deafnews
deafjobs@yahoo.com
