Dad’s typical “out to eat” face — unable to hear a word of the conversation.
My father spent most of his teen and early adult years on a boat. First on a lobster boat, then in the engine room of a research ship stationed off New Zealand, then on a lobster boat again. Boats and the water are in his blood. Unfortunately, they’re also in his ears. Decades of roaring engines have had a major impact on his hearing.
When we go to a loud restaurant, I’ll watch his eyes glaze over as we chatter around him, or on our annual ride to look at Christmas lights, he’ll sit in the backseat, unable to hear most of our exclamations. In crowded situations, he probably misses half of what is said and yet he’ll likely never do anything about it.
My dad is not unique. Millions of people over age 50 have significant hearing loss, and yet only about 15% of those wear hearing aids. I read somewhere that people go seven to 10 years without being able to hear before they get help; I’d argue that most people go even longer than that. If I see 10 people a day with significant hearing loss, usually only two or three are wearing hearing aids (another one or two have aids but refuse to wear them).
There’s a stigma around hearing loss that doesn’t exist with other parts of aging. Got a bad hip? You get a hip replacement. Can’t read? You get bifocals. Sure, we drag our feet on these issues, too, but nothing like how we drag our feet when it comes to hearing.
Not being able to hear can be very isolating—both for the person with hearing loss and the person who lives with them. People stop going to parties and loud restaurants, and even watching television becomes an adventure in lip-reading and missed plot developments. Being a spouse to someone with hearing loss is no easier. You’re misunderstood. You repeat everything. You’re told to “Stop mumbling” and to “Speak up!”
But problems with hearing loss can go much deeper than social inconveniences. Studies have linked hearing loss to increased falls (because our ears have a role in balance) and dementia (one study says severe hearing loss makes us five times more likely to develop dementia). It’s actually kind of ironic that many people won’t admit hearing loss because they don’t want to be “old,” but untreated hearing loss can actually speed up the aging the process.
If you’re one of the 30-plus million seniors who doesn’t hear as well as you used to, the time to treat it is now. The longer you go not hearing, the more irreversible your hearing loss may be. You lose the ability to understand words as time goes on and you won’t get that ability back. If you’re a spouse or an adult child or a caregiver to one of these people, don’t enable him to put off treatment. In other words, stop being his human hearing aid—don’t translate for him.
People have many reasons not to get help for hearing loss, including cost, vanity, and complaints about the aids themselves. There’s truth to all of these excuses.
Hearing aids ARE expensive (we’re lucky in Massachusetts that some insurances will cover them but if yours doesn’t, you may be able to work out a payment plan with your audiologist); the best ones ARE visible (although today everyone walks around with something sticking out of their ear); and the technology DOES need improvement. But just about everyone who takes the time to see an ear doctor and get the right fit has a better quality of life than before they got it. Being hard of hearing doesn’t make you “old,” but leaving it untreated can.
Molly Rowe owns FirstLight Home Care with her husband, Steve Rowe, and lives in Swampscott with their two sons. FirstLight provides non-medical in-home care to adults in Swampscott, Marblehead, Nahant, Lynn, Salem, Peabody, Danvers, Beverly, and Lynnfield. For more information and help caring for your loved ones in the comfort of their own homes, please visit FirstLight’s website at www.salem.firstlighthomecare.com or contact Molly at 781-691-5755/[email protected]
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