I’ve just finished reading this wonderful book, an English translation of the original French, which is one of the closest representations of what it is to be hard of hearing. The main character, Louise, is severely HoH and navigates the world via lip reading primarily. Neither hearing or Deaf, her life is upended when a cochlear implant is proposed.
Although I don’t have the same degree of hearing loss, much of this book resonated with my own experience of the workplace and life generally. Well worth a read!
Along these lines, kind of, does anyone have references to articles that explain to the non-hearing impaired what it is like to lose some of your hearing and how those friends/relatives can be of help?
Some of the writing by Shari Eberts might be what you’re looking for. See Hear & Beyond for example. Her blog at the same website is worth a look.
My experience is that many hearing people find it hard to understand a HoH person’s experience, especially if you appear to navigate life successfully in most ways. Even people you live with can still do things like talk to you from another room (I don’t respond to underline my point!) or while looking away.
I appreciate your recommendation. I’ve read it. It changed my attitude and changed my life. I discovered that I was behaving as a victim that was hard of hearing. It encouraged me to learn to communicate better.
I bought the book; I have it on my iPad as well.
ps Thank you to the person here who recommended the book. Was it you? You truly make a differnce suggesting that others read it.
Best audiologist I ever saw was HoH himself, and formerly of Phonak too. Needless to say, he had a very good understanding of what it’s like but also the right questions to ask me. In one hour, I think I had a level of service I’d never enjoyed before.
Contrast that with another audiologist I saw who complained about the number of programs I had in my HAs, commenting ‘Oh, you’re a fiddler…you only need one programme, the automatic one. Your hearing aids are very smart you know’ implying I wasn’t qualified to know which to use.
A week later I came back, saw a tech for a minor issue and said ‘I don’t think my programs got copied back into my HAs…’ Duly added back with an apology for the oversight.