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June 11th, 2006 at 4:34 pm
I have had the can you sleep/swim/shower in hearing aids. People often get really quite indignant upon my behalf that they are not waterproof which I think is pretty silly myself.
Hearing aids are pretty impressive electronically:
1) Powered by tiny 1.3-5V cells running for up to two weeks at 12-16 hours per day. You cannot power a single LED from an electronics store on a 675 hearing aid battery!
2) Operating in extremes of temperature from winter outside to hot summers. Not to mention body temperature next to the wearer’s head. My aid doesn’t like
June 11th, 2006 at 5:28 pm
I have had the can you sleep/swim/shower in hearing aids. People often get really quite indignant upon my behalf that they are not waterproof which I think is pretty silly myself.
Hearing aids are pretty impressive electronically:
1) Powered by tiny 1.3-5V cells running for up to two weeks at 12-16 hours per day. You cannot power a single LED from an electronics store on a 675 hearing aid battery!
2) Operating in extremes of temperature from winter outside to hot summers. Not to mention body temperature next to the wearer’s head. My aid doesn’t like less than 2C, and will start to distort sounds badly. I am told lithium batteries will help this, I will let you know when I try it.
3) Sweaty humid environment caused by being close to the skin and in some places humid climate too. Sweat contains salts and other corrosive chemicals, yet the plastic outer casing of hearing aids generally doesn’t go foul. Think what happens to cheap metal (nickel, copper) things when worn close to skin for months on end.
4) Durability - well looked after aids can often last years between repairs. I found I could increase average time between breakdowns by several months by taking my hearing aid out when it is wet and shoving it into my pocket. Same for extreme temperature changes (outside to inside in winter)…
5) The size of the microphone and speakers(transducer) are tiny, measured in mm. Yes by hearie standards the sound is tinny, but nonetheless impressive. Think hifi nerds: ask them how big their hifi speakers are! Compare that to your hearing aids.
I made up some sound files which use audiologic measurements as a rough estimate of what I hear with my aid - but cannot account for any distortion due to cochlea or auditory nerve damage which may be present. These can be found at http://www.barakta.org.uk/stuff/hearing/ .
I recently found an open source sound editor which would probably allow anyone here to edit an existing sound file filtered to their approximate ‘free field’ hearing with aids. There will be a substantial drop in gain (volume) which you may have to kludge so that the hearies can hear anything. Even showing sound-quality often shocks them. Audacity is available for windows, macOSX and linux - so should suit everyone here!
If anyone has audiometric data that they want me to convert files with, do feel free to email me at barakta@barakta.org.uk and I’ll do what I can. I found that demonstrating my loss through filtered soundfiles (known songs/speakers voices) really got the point across to friends - if nothing else the drastic loss in gain. If a sound is comfortable for the average hearing person - say a speaker’s voice or music, then I can ‘barely’ hear it even with my hearing aid on. I find it gives people an appreciation of the levels that I live with, and why sometimes I have the TV a tad too loud
I need to emulate what I hear over a telephone as well, see if that scares people too. Might do that after we’ve cooked our evening meal.
June 12th, 2006 at 9:49 pm
I think the hardest question is the “What do you see” question. How do you explain something when you have nothing to compare it to?
But the funniest question I got was a few years ago. I was a student tour guide for my HS (Indiana school f/t blind) and I was giving a tour to 3rd and 4th graders who had spent the past several weeks learning about Helen Keller. We were in the aquatic center and one adorable little boy raises his hand, so I called on him and he goes: “Is it safe for us to swim in there? I mean, am I going to catch blind from the water?” That was so cute. He looked so serious and afraid about catching blind. It was adorable.
June 14th, 2006 at 6:00 am
Alli, it is cute in a kiddie way, but thats very unusual for anyone of any age to ask, what way do they educate kids about disibilities there, I just fidn it a striking question!!
As for the questions i have been asked, im not sure, I have had all the usual ones, like about getting them wet and how do they work for you, the hardest to be asked is what do you hear, or what does such and such sound like to you!! because my answer is usually based on memories of sound rather than being really sure of the comparison, how do I know if my memories are correct??!! I could hear well up to the age of around 7 and everything after that began to go downhill!! so I really only compare the sounds I have now to memories!!
June 14th, 2006 at 11:15 am
I have yet to hear a kid ask me if he might “catch deaf” from the
what was left were just memories of
water.:)I also find that cute, Alli. Kids say funny things and ask
silly questions.
Yes Lette, just the memories of sound. When I was little, I can
still hear the rain, I still cover my ears with my hands if there’s
thunder. I can still hear music when I was a teen-ager.Now that I
am approaching golden girlhood
those lovely sounds.
In grade school we used to recite these lines in a poem -
These are the sounds I love
The rustling window curtains
The ticking clock upon the shelf
The creaking kitchen door
I think I should replace it with- These are the sounds I miss
How ever these hearing aids claim the sound clarity it is still never
the same. But of course I will still use hearing aids so I can be
useful. I’m just musing and missing.
One funny question I still remember somebody asked about my deafness
was - “Can it be treated?” I found it funny because that somebody
used to be my ardent suitor. I told him no it cant be treated, I
will just have to wear a hearing aid like those having poor eyesight
they wear eyeglasses. He stopped coming to our house. Obviously he cant
take a deafie for a wife.
June 14th, 2006 at 12:05 pm
I keep being asked one question: about hearing birds singing. This is mostly because one of the composers I do research on and write about was obsessed with birdsong, so it’s something I find myself saying and writing a lot about even though… well, I don’t hear birds and haven’t done since I was young (no high freq. hearing). But I have an idea what it should sound like because the composer I work on (called Messiaen) filled lots of notebooks of musical notation of his birdsong notations. So I can still hear them in my head
June 14th, 2006 at 12:30 pm
I think someone had tried to explain with too many details. I talked to him as we walked back and he knew about viruses and such that can hurt your eyes/ears, but he didn’t understand that they weren’t like the flu or a cold.
He’d just spent the last 2 or 3 months learning about Helen Keller. So the visit to the blind school was like the culmination of that. I don’t really know how we teach our kids, I didn’t really pay attention. I already knew enough about it for it not to bother me.
June 14th, 2006 at 3:35 pm
hohprof: That’s very cool about Messiaen’s music, I can’t say I’ve ever heard any. Would you be able to fish out a favourite track or two for Friday so I can hear some? You have a nice hifi.
Alli: That’s quite cute with the kid. I am glad you were able to explain it to him and unconfuse him. As a teenager I often went into my old infact school armed with my old hearing aid which children could try and spend 30 minutes talking to a group of children about hearing. My Godfather is blind and he has done similar things for children, explaining how braille and guide dogs and canes allow him to lead an independent life.
In my experience being willing to answer questions no matter how silly, rude, or strange they might seem works well. Even if I am in a hurry I always try and answer any questions children have about my hearing or hands. In fact what they often ask me is if my hands hurt, they are more worried about the idea of someone being in pain than they are with ‘dis’ability.
I have been looking into videoing myself signing, and in reply to an ASL terp asking for a British person to check her BSL fingerspelling I uploaded my ASL fingerspelling for her to check back… I used my right hand, and it was interesting to see the comments that I got - very pragmatic and complimentary.
It will be interesting to see what people think of my two-handed signing which will show my much more limited left hand - which from my test videos I realise looks a lot worse (more confusing) from another person’s perspective than it does from mine. It’ll do me good to get used to how it looks on video too!
June 14th, 2006 at 6:56 pm
I will certainly try and find something for Friday, though the problem as one of Messiaen’s pupils put it to me was “why birdsong sounds like birdsong, but Messiaen’s birdsong sounds like Messiaen”
June 14th, 2006 at 9:58 pm
Ha- “catch deaf”
The one thing that caught me off guard was in my first week of college, a peer came up to me, looked at the hearing aid in my ear, and wanted to know if it was a cochlear implant. In my mind, it was apples and oranges- but in retrospect, I can see where he might have been confused…sort of.
I get a strong impression that hearing people are seriously mystified by hearing loss. And that can be said for any disability… I will readily admit that blindness baffles me- it feels like a whole different set of parameters in terms of experiencing the world, and the perceived differences are certainly intimidating.
HOH Prof- I also can’t hear birdsongs- there used to be a mockingbird in my dad’s neighborhood- he loved it, but to me, it was just a bird being noisy.
I definitely agree that the best thing we can do, to better other people’s understanding as well as our own peace of mind, is to answer whatever question that comes our way.
Barakta- I would *love* to take you up on that offer to alter a piece of music to my audiogram. I wasn’t entirely successful in my own attempt… Does anyone know if british audiograms are the same/different from those in the US?
June 15th, 2006 at 12:51 am
I will readily admit that blindness baffles me- it feels like a whole different set of parameters in terms of experiencing the world, and the perceived differences are certainly intimidating.
That is very perceptive. Frankly, deafness scares me. So much of my world is defined by sound that I don’t know how I’d experience it otherwise. I mean, deaf poeple don’t scare me but the idea of hearing less is very unsettling.
One of my Deaf friends asked me once what sunrise sounded like. She thought that everything she could see had a sound b/c hearing people always talked about sounds she didn’t think about. That was a sad question. She was one of the sweetest people I ever met so this question broke my heart. How did I tell her that sunrise itself didn’t really have a sound? I don’t remember what I told her…
Barkarta: we (the blind school) frequently did outreach with local public schools. we’d take low vision aids/braille books and the like and let people ask questions. The question most people would want to ask but always thought they were rude. the younger kids always asked the most simple but deep questions. I love little kid questions.
June 15th, 2006 at 2:53 am
hohprof: I trust your judgement. I know what birdsong sounds like, I just wonder what Messiaen did with the inspiration in musical terms - kim curses our local ‘chickens’ every morning for being too perky at 4am and imitating the police car sirens (an evolutional advantage according to a zoologist friend of mine).
Katie: I often get asked if my hearing aid is a cochlea implant. To be fair it is a black one of these.
I often have great fun explaining in English or BSL that it is a bone anchored hearing aid. On the other hand it is NOT beige! I have also had an obnoxious drunk lady accuse me of listening to my ‘music’ instead of answering my mobile to my mum who was calling me on it (forgetting that unlike my sister I can’t answer it)…
As for audiograms as far as I know the standard is pretty consistent between the UK, in that the thresholds are measured in decibels at certain frequencies. If you want to email me your audiogram to barakta@barakta.org.uk I’ll see what I can do. I can do it to any music or sound file of your choice. If your audiogram doesn’t have your measurements of hearing with hearing aids I’ll attempt a ‘without’ filter, but I might have to kludge it…
Alli: I think it is normal for the blind to be scared of deafness and we deafies to be scared of going blind. I certainly find the idea of being blind quite scary as I consider written text to be my primary and preferred language. I read very fast, and would find any impediment to that extremely annoying. Fortunately aside from a few periods where my vertigo was very bad I have never not been able to read at my usual high speed.
The sunrise question is an interesting one. I guess I never thought about it before, as with my hearing aid I hear a lot of sounds. A sunrise is one of those things a deaf person can appreciate equally to a hearing one. I also suspect it is one of those things people go on about blind people missing - analogous to deaf people missing out on birdsong. My friend who got a cochlea implant when he was 14 says that he hates birdsong and his response to hearing it for the first time was “Argh, what is that” “Birds? Eh? This is what hearies go on about all the time” “I say kill the feckers (birds not hearies)”.
I think outreach work teaches us a lot about what people do and don’t realise. What people understand blindness, deafness and other things to be like. I am told when I was small I couldn’t understand how my friend E’s dad J knew I had entered the room - he was blind. I didn’t realise I breathed very loudly as I couldn’t breathe through my nose - he almost certainly heard me like every other hearie in the house.
Another friend of mine C was at E’s house with me the day that J died of a sudden heart attack. C thought she had startled J when she said ‘hello’ to him while she walked past him cycling on his stationary bicycle by the door to the house. I told my mum about C’s worries and my mum reassured C that it was in no way her fault; J would probably have heard her, and been expecting many people to pass him as school had just finished. C, E and I were only 8 when J died, C and I understood that J couldn’t see, but I don’t think we realised the extent to which he could utilise his hearing and tactile senses. I’ve never forgotten J - I miss him still.
June 16th, 2006 at 4:18 am
Im lucky in the sence that there are only certain things I cant hear, I actually am not sure what they are because they vary on the situation, but I can hear things if they are loud enuf and im in close range of them, I can hear birdsong, but not from inside like i used to, I used to be woken by them!! but if im outside and theres one in a close tree ill hear it, and thats one thing ill miss more than voice if my hearing goes fully, but other things like, wind i cant hear unless its really heavy and i have my aids on, I hadent heard it for years and I only remembered what it sounded like, and when i got my new aids a couple of months ago, I was at my boyfriedns house, and I got scared at a sound comming down the chimney!! It was wind, and it was the first time in years i heard it!! and it freaked the hell out of me!!
June 16th, 2006 at 10:52 am
I love music very much but I’m also tone deaf. I keep reading about
bird music but I have no idea how bird sound can be bird music. My
memories of bird sounds were those made by sparrows as they breakfast
on the cherry like fruits of the teresa tree in our front yard and
and as they flit about under our church dome during mass. When these
sparrows breakfast, the sounds they make were like delightful chatter.
When they’re at church their chatter has echo. I hope I can read
Nigel’s book about Messiaen so I can have more ideas about bird
songs and bird music.
My college friend passed this quote to me in an attempt to share to
me her own fascination with bird music -
The time to hear bird music is between four and six in the
morning. Seven o’clock is not too late, but by eight the singer’s
fine rapture is over, because I suspect of the contentment of the
inner man that comes with breakfast. A poet should always be hungry
or have a lost love.:(
Donald Culross Peattie
Oh well, birdsong or no birdsong, God is still good and His mercies
never end.:)
June 16th, 2006 at 11:22 am
Well yes, it is delightful chatter, but if you put into the comparison of human voices, you can have very musical voices and accents also, Bird song, is twittering calls, some coarse and some very pleasant, a robin, and blackbirds calls are my favorite, they have a reppetitive song, and their call is more of a song than the noisy chatter of other birds like the little sparrow, and yes it makes you appreciate the wonderous nature in our world