My New Hearing Aids in Different Sound Environments

In my previous post on my new hearing aids, I wrote about the speech banana and the sounds that I miss. My hearing aids boost the amplification for the frequencies of sounds I don't hear. The catch is they also boost the volume for environmental noises in those same frequencies. Check out the chart below and you will see that the sound a fan makes is right in the place where I need the most help. That is my dilemma. Without hearing aids, fans are barely noticeable. With hearing aids, they are very intrusive to my listening experience.

My new audiologist assures me that my brain will learn to stop paying attention to background sounds like fans over time. The strategy that I'm using is to have only one program for my hearing aids. Before I had an additional program to use in noisy situations. I ended up using it as my default setting. I didn't give my brain a chance to adapt to these "new" sounds. Right now I'm in an adjustment period, but I'm determined to give this a chance to work.

Here's a description of various sound environments I've encountered during the last two weeks.

• Outdoor Environment

My hearing aids are a pleasure to wear outdoors. The day after I got them, I had a conversation with a neighbor I had never met before which is something I would definitely have avoided in the past. I was able to hear her just fine. When I walk my dog Rusty, I can hear his tag jingle against his collar ring. I have never heard that before. I asked my husband if it was a new sound because Rusty just got a new collar for his birthday, but he says it's always sounded like that. I am hearing bird song as melody rather than individual tweets. I had to laugh at myself the other day when I told a friend about listening to the cicadas. I exclaimed on how musical they were and not so overwhelmingly noisy. My friend pointed out there's a whole lot less of them around this time of year. Oops. I haven't encountered any weed wackers or snow blowers so far but lawn mowers aren't too bad.

• Inside the House

The microwave timer sounds different than I remembered. It's much easier to hear as is my oven's timer. The television's sound is better. I'm understanding my husband and son's speech much more easily. When I first got my new aids, my husband washing dishes in the sink was so loud, I asked him to stop. I know what you're thinking, I must be crazy! Well, rest assured, I wised up quick. Now when water is running and the dishes are clanking against each other, I turn my hearing aids down a couple settings to cope. The worst noise of all in the house for me is our bathroom fan. It's unbearable. Unfortunately, the fan comes on whenever the light is on. I'd really like to get that fixed. Until then, the bathroom fan is my biggest challenge in the house.

• In the Car

I have discovered my car makes a sound when you start up the engine to remind you to put your seatbelt on. I had never heard that before. I actually get a kick out of hearing it in the morning. I'm sure that will wear off but for now it's a novelty. I have the car radio turned to a lower volume level - by as many as 10 settings at time. Unfortunately, I am not yet able to enjoy music on the radio or easily understand what the broadcaster's are saying, no matter what volume setting I try. I have to admit, that's been a bit of a disappointment to me. More times than not, I am leaving the radio off. Road noise on highways is loud but not as loud as it was with my previous aids. I feel like I am coping with it. Before I used to take my hearing aids out when I was driving on highways. Surprisingly, a squeaking noise that I heard my brakes making before is actually less audible now. I have no explanation but it does help me understand why when I had a friend listen to the brake noise, he said everything was fine and didn't seem at all concerned about the noise I was hearing.

• In my Cubicle at Work

I have two challenges there. One is a space heater. Almost every day my work area is so cold, I turn a space heater on to keep warm. It took me a while to adjust to this sound with my previous aids (remember my comment about program 2) and I'm having to start over again with this pair. Sometimes I recite my audiologist's words - my brain will learn to ignore this noise - repeatedly to myself like a mantra. Sometimes I turn my left hearing aid down a setting or two. The other problematic sound is the HVAC system. Currently it sounds as though a vacuum is going constantly. I'm working on ignoring that too. On the plus side, I can more easily detect when someone is nearing my desk.

• Best Buy electronics store

This place was a nightmarish cacophony of sounds for me. I actually felt as though I were in physical pain and had to leave the store before my husband was finished browsing. This is not the place to go when you are adjusting to new hearing aids. Just take my word for it.

• Church

I was pleasantly surprised to hear the choir singing. I really missed that part of the service previously. The only solution for me was to sit right next to them. But naturally my regular pew was on the other side of the church and creature of habit that I am, I was much more comfortable there. I should also add that regular pew was a better spot for hearing the sermon. With my new aids in, the sounds of church - papers rustling and the congregation reading aloud in unison - did not bother me as they had before.

I hope that helps convey a bit of what my listening experiences have been like in the first two weeks of adjusting to my hearing aids. Drop me a question in the comments section if I overlooked a setting that you're curious as to how it sounds. As always, I welcome your comments and advice.

An Interview with Gordon Hempton

Since November, I've been in contact with Gordon Hempton, author of One Square Inch of Silence. Over the course of several emails, we discussed various topics related to hearing, listening skills, and hearing loss. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by what he had to tell me.

Hi Gordon,
I wanted to write and tell you I am enjoying reading your book One Square Inch of Silence. I plan to write about your book on my blog once I've finished reading it. I think my readers would really enjoy your beautiful descriptions of nature sounds. Would you be willing to answer a few questions by email that I could include as part of my article?

Yes, I would be glad to answer any questions that you might have for your blog.

In the book you discuss your own experience of a hearing loss, which fortunately proved to be temporary rather than permanent. Why did you have a negative reaction when a doctor suggested a hearing aid for your hearing loss?

As you already know hearing aids are designed for human speech with some of the more sophisticated ones including settings for music and other purposes. But I do not know of a single hearing aid or cochlear implant processor that does a decent job of nature interpretation—although they could if the manufacturers felt there was an interest.

Do you teach people how to listen to nature?

I used to teach wilderness listening skills in classes up to 21. Now I only offer one-on-one tutorials, everything from just listening with the naked ear to using my professional sound recording equipment to produce a unique CD.

Please tell me more about your listening tutorials.

My listening tutorials are simple—basically I have made a career out of listening and so I work one-on-one with individuals to achieve what goals they might have in mind—or to put it more accurately, address those goals and then move on to goals that were previously unrecognized. Nearly everyone that I have worked with wants to become a better nature listener and while there are definitely some techniques for enhancing skill level, what most people don’t take into consideration is that WE ALL HEAR DIFFERENTLY with or without a hearing loss. The key to becoming a better listener is not to hear what someone else hears but instead to recognize that you hear differently and learn to use this difference to explore the world.

I take people of all ages and hearing abilities into nature to use my recording equipment. The equipment helps focus the auditory attention and also remove many of our bad listening habits—for some odd reason when someone listens through a microphone they listen to everything. We explore ocean beach, listen to beach logs, walk through ancient forests… as we do a deeper inner nature emerges—and this begins deep listening—a soul changing experience.

In brief my tutorials do little more than encourage you to trust your instincts and gain confidence in using your hearing to its fullest. One woman commented after one of my workshops that she had taken the workshop in order to hear many of the sounds that she had missed since her hearing loss, but she confessed that even with her hearing loss she is hearing more than when she had normal hearing.

How can the deaf and hard of hearing community play a role in your cause? I ask because I found reading your book - the recounting of America's hearing loss- to remind myself of my own hearing loss. How can you motivate those of us who perhaps cannot hear these nature sounds to play a part in protecting them for those who can?

I would like to answer all of those related questions by describing my experiences with my fiancée, Rebecca, who was born completely deaf in her right ear and impaired in her left ear. Today she has a cochlear implant in her right and a hearing aid in her left (but even with it she tests with profound hearing loss and is eligible to go bilateral with implants). I know we are an odd couple—I make my livelihood by listening and recording nature’s most eloquent and subtle voices and she has no idea what the hell I am talking about. She has never heard a bird that sounds anything other than a chirp—all birds are the same annoyance. All water sounds are the same, too. In strong contrast I have shaped my life to hear nature’s music more clearly, providing a series of epiphanies for me.

Yet, the poetry of nature sound is written in visual patterns. And while Rebecca did not know anything about nature listening she knew a lot about people listening—she taught me that you do not need to hear to be a good listener. This is obvious to me now but totally new to me before I met her. So we are trading knowledge and now embarking on a project called, Lip Reading Nature. Simply put: the same technique used to understand the spoken word (and the CONTEXT that allows a true understanding), can be applied to the wonderful expressions of nature—thereby allowing one sense (vision) to compensate for the lack of information provided by another sense (hearing). It is entirely possible for example to look at a photograph and know what it would sound like if you were there in person with normal hearing.

Enough said, the point of all this is that our national parks may look visually pristine but in fact are full of auditory trash due to overhead air traffic. As a result of noise pollution in our parks and also in and around our homes and work places, even the hearing world is profoundly listening impaired. It is especially important that both worlds, the hearing and none-hearing, listen to the Earth, because the Earth is speaking and telling us great things. When you think of people that you love, and discover that they might needs something, you simply do it if you can, you don’t get out the cost/benefit spreadsheet and see if it is worth it. We need to fall back in love with Earth and our courtship grounds are our national parks and wilderness areas.

The other night Rebecca wakes up and says, “What is that?” I say, “Traffic noise.” She says, “But I’m deaf!” The world is getting so out of control with noise pollution that it can wake the deaf, literally.

And for those that have some of their hearing it is particularly important that we keep our natural areas free of noise pollution. A passing overhead jet (of which there are thousands each day over natural areas) makes what little access that hearing impaired persons have to listening to nature impossible.

It is time for all of us, hearing or not, to defend our right to quiet from noise pollution which not only damages our health but separates us from each other and the Earth. I urge everyone to speak out on behalf of nature and get the noise pollution out of our parks. Currently there is not a single place in the world off limits to aircraft for non-military and security reasons. The goal of One Square Inch of Silence Foundation is to establish Olympic National Park as our nation’s first quiet place. You can read more about that at www.onesquareinch.org.

What's happening now with your project on Lip Reading Nature?

We are fundraising for the documentary to be shot. Have the pilot DVD edited and shot, but no funds yet.

Thank you, Gordon. When I wrote you I had no idea you had a close relationship with someone who is deaf. I'm so pleased now that I took the chance on contacting you about your book and writing about it for my blog. Thanks again for your eloquent response. I am so proud to put this on my blog. All the best to you and Rebecca, Sarah

One Square Inch of Silence: One Reader's Experience

One Square Inch of Silence refers to a spot in Olympic National Park located in the upper northwest corner of the continental United States. Gordon Hempton, an acoustic ecologist, designated this spot as the last quiet place in America and vowed in 2005 to protect it from manmade noise intrusions. The book chronicles his journey, two years later, across the United States on his way to Washington DC to request federal recognition of the spot and to discuss the value of quiet in the lives of Americans.


I first heard about One Square Inch of Silence when it was cited in passing at a Hearing Loss Association of America (HLAA) conference presentation last June. Before I picked it up for myself this winter, I had only a vague notion that it was about how the world had become a noisier place and this was not such a good thing. The book does talk about that but it is so much more. I quickly realized I would need to devote some time to a careful reading of it.

In the beginning, I found myself slowing down to read the book's beautiful descriptive passages and recreate their scenery in my mind. I was enchanted by his descriptions of nature sounds unknown to me and enjoyed "hearing" them through Hempton's ears. I thought that might be all I would gain from the book.

But quite early on in the story, Hempton reveals he had a frightening experience with a sudden onset of a hearing loss. Because his work as a nature sounds recorder depended on his ability to hear, the loss was devastating. Like many of us, he found himself withdrawing from others when communication became difficult. Eventually, he was diagnosed with a middle ear problem. His doctor suggested a hearing aid, but he refused. Fortunately for him his hearing loss proved to be only short term, rather than permanent. Over a period of months, after Hempton made a few changes in his habits, his hearing was fully restored. This part of the book stopped me in my tracks as I pondered what it would be like for me to have normal hearing again.

Much later in the book, Hempton has his hearing tested at a special facility in Indianapolis. He includes his audiogram and his results are excellent. He has fantastic hearing. I felt wistful when I saw that. What must having above normal hearing be like?

Throughout the story, I found myself struck by the insights of various people Hempton interacts with along his cross-country trek. Several people had found healing through spending time alone in the wilderness. I wondered if it would be possible to restore a person's hearing, lost through noise impacts, by spending time in silence. The book doesn't say. I wonder if anyone has ever tried it.

I have to admit that reading this book as someone with a hearing loss was tough for me at times. The story of America’s hearing loss reminded me of my own. Near the very end of the book, Ken Feith of the EPA, says "People simply do not understand the significant adverse health effects of noise. They just don't." Unless they're coping with a hearing loss on a daily basis, I wanted to retort.

Whether or not people in the hearing loss community will want to get behind Hempton's push to save nature sounds that we ourselves may or may not be able to hear, I do not know. But there are several parts of the book I'd like to highlight for you.

First, the spiritual influence of nature is expressed several times in the book with insights like "In silence I feel God's presence and ultimate control." and "God whispers. Man shouts." These comments resonated with me strongly. Personally I find spending time in nature to be as spiritually renewing as time spent in church. Nature refreshes my spirit and makes me feel alive to my existence as a creature on this planet connected with every other living thing, whether plant or animal. Obviously, sounds are not as much a part of this experience for me as I don't hear crickets and other high pitched calls. Instead, it is the fresh air flooding my lungs and the visual delights of trees, water, and sky and their colors, shapes, patterns, and textures.

Secondly, Hempton discusses how the animals' sense of security is compromised when manmade noise intrudes into their habitat. Background noise interferes with the animals' ability to communicate with each other and attract a mate. For the animals, it's vital to survival to be able to hear a predator's stealthy approach. As someone who is frequently startled by people approaching me unawares in my daily surroundings, I can appreciate the vulnerability of the wild creatures drowned in a sea of noise produced by power tools, trucks, helicopters, etc. over which they have no control. I know that whenever I have visited a large city, I have found myself on hyper alert to the unfamiliar surroundings and proximity of strangers. Hempton explains that our ears evolved to serve us in this capacity. We have no earlids because our ears never sleep. So often, humans are utterly oblivious to the impact their activities have on animal life. This is something Hempton hopes to change through his writing.

Lastly, whether you agree with Hempton's priorities or not, he is a man to be admired. I recently wrote about being the change you want to see in the world and Gordon Hempton is a perfect example of that philosophy in action. Throughout his book a recurring theme is whether one person can make a difference in the world. I believe that one can. In his quest to protect the last quiet place in America, Hempton has gotten two airlines to agree to fly around Olympic National Park and one airline to make a concession towards that goal. He has also persuaded his local senator to sponsor legislation to protect the park's soundscape. He has made a difference.

The book concludes with several helpful guides to quiet in the wild, in the office, and in your home and neighborhood. I would also be remiss as a librarian if I didn't at least mention that the book's narrative includes an interesting description of the Seattle Public Library's acoustics.

You can find out more about One Square Inch of Silence at the organization's website. I'm interested in knowing your thoughts on the subject whether you've read the book or not. Tomorrow I will publish Gordon Hempton's response to my question: How would you motivate those of us who can't hear these nature sounds to play a part in protecting them for those who can? His answer may surprise you.

Beware of Loud Toys Underneath the Christmas Tree

tyranny
Originally uploaded by 1001things

Did you know that playing with loud toys poses a risk to a child's hearing? If not, here's some facts you may want to know.

Almost 15% of children ages 6-17 show signs of hearing loss.

The acoustic standard for toys adopted by the American Society for Testing and Materials is 85 db for most toys and 65 db for toys held close to the ear.

Not all toys currently available on store shelves are within these decibel ranges.

The Pennsylvania Public Interest Group recently released their 24th annual report outlining toy safety guidelines for parents and citing examples of currently available toys that may pose potential safety hazards. They offer these common sense recommendations for parents when in comes to loud toys.

If a toy seems too loud for you, then it is probably too loud for your child.

You can put tape over the speakers of any toys you already own that are too loud or remove the batteries.

Specifically, the report cites the following toys as being louder than recommended when tested by their organization.

Mattel Secret Saturdays Cryptid Claw

Playskool Kota and Pals Stompers Triceratops

Fisher Price Laugh & Learn Learning Phone

Vtech Bright Lights Phone

The complete report entitled Trouble in Toyland can be downloaded here.

Protecting My Hearing

As mentioned in a previous post, my hearing has stayed the same since my initial diagnosis of hearing loss in 2006. While making the adjustment to life with hearing aids, I have been conscious of my desire to protect the hearing I have. Here's why:

According to the American Academy of Audiology, of the 36 million Americans with hearing loss, one in three were caused by noise exposure. Here are some common examples of everyday sounds with their loudness measured in decibels:

• dishwashers 60 db


• alarm clocks 80 db


• hair dryers 90 db


• blenders 90 db


• lawn mowers 90 db


• mp3 player at full volume 100 db


• ambulance 130 db

Anything over 85 db represents a risk to your hearing if your exposure is prolonged enough.

How long is too long? I have not found a definitive answer to that. Most likely because it would vary from person to person. I wish I had the citation, but I do remember having read somewhere that once you already have a hearing loss, you can be more susceptible to further loss from noise exposure.

The American Academy of Audiology recommends three strategies for protecting your hearing.

1. Walk Away From the Noise


2. Turn Down the Volume


3. Wear Ear Protection

I've been putting that into practice in my own life. At a recent sporting event, loud music was blaring while the basketball teams warmed up. When I noticed 20 minutes on the clock until game time, I decided to walk out of the gymnasium and wait in the entrance way for the game to start. It felt good to be so proactive about my hearing rather than enduring the noise in misery worrying that my hearing was being adversely affected.

I have also been trying to turn down the volume when possible on my cell phone and work phone. My normal habit was to keep them at full volume which was really too loud for those with strong, clear voices. It's better for me to keep the sound at a lower level and turn it up as needed.



At home, I have also been wearing ear protection. In the morning when I'm blowdrying my hair, I slip in foam earplugs first. Although my hair dryer claims to be a quiet model, it's plenty loud. Add that noise to the sound of the ceiling fan that comes on with the bathroom light and my ears get a beating. The earplugs make it bearable. I keep them in a sealed plastic baggie when I'm not using them. When I'm vacuuming or using an electric mixer or the blender in the kitchen, I wear over the ears protection (pictured above). They are terrific at reducing the volume. I also wear them outdoors when I'm using a shop vac to clean my car.

What do you do to protect your hearing?