Someone I Care About Says I Need Help

One of the most common reasons new patients show up at our clinic is because “someone I care about said I need help.” Sometimes, the appointment was initially made to appease a partner or child or other loved one, and the person in awaiting their appointment may genuinely think they don’t need our care. And sometimes they don’t.

More commonly, however, if those around you are pushing you to have a hearing test (or pointedly indicating you need hearing aids), it’s because you’ve slowly begun to change your behavior over time, as your brain works to compensate for gradual hearing loss. Often, one of the earliest signs of this is coming to believe that you can hear just fine…it’s just everyone else who’s always mumbling. This feeling that others aren’t speaking clearly enough can lead to irritation, frustration, embarrassment, and a gradual withdrawal from social engagements, as they become more and more troublesome to navigate.

You don’t have to have difficulty hearing all sounds to have hearing loss. Feeling like those around you are not speaking clearly can actually be caused by losing the ability to hear sounds of higher pitch while keeping the ability to hear lower pitch sounds. Vowels and “voiced” consonants (i.e. m, g, b, etc.) are lower pitch than “fricative” consonants and speech sounds (particularly sounds such as “sss” and “th”). You may find that you hear only parts of words, and it’s not enough to actually make sense of them!

Imagine, for example, if you were handed a paper which read: My rawing wa no a pi ur o a ha.

“My” is perfectly clear, and “rawing” can only be so many things once you realize it’s missing a letter. But the rest of the sentence quickly dissolves into gibberish. There are almost words there, nearly enough to create meaning… but not enough to know the sentence reads – “My drawing was not a picture of a hat.”

It is difficult to admit we need help even when we encounter symptoms that come on fast and are obvious. It can be even harder with conditions like gradual hearing loss, which start small enough to be ignored, and then grow slowly enough for us to dismiss as our brains find ways to adapt. We may stop listening for the tone that tells us the microwave is done, and then forget it ever had one. We may not realize the songbirds never started singing again in the spring. We may even teach ourselves to lip read, and not realize we’re using it in place of actually hearing the sounds. Sometimes we need those around us to point out what we’re missing.

If someone you care about has said you need help, it’s worth seriously considering their concerns. Seeing a professional audiologist for an evaluation is relatively inexpensive (most often covered by insurance!), particularly when weighed against the value of the activities and relationships you enjoy.