{"id":654,"date":"2015-09-10T02:25:36","date_gmt":"2015-09-10T02:25:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/firstlighthomecare.com\/home-healthcare-salem\/blog\/?p=149"},"modified":"2026-02-02T15:02:37","modified_gmt":"2026-02-02T15:02:37","slug":"dont-delay-getting-help-for-hearing-loss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.firstlighthomecare.com\/home-healthcare-salem\/2015\/09\/10\/dont-delay-getting-help-for-hearing-loss\/","title":{"rendered":"Don\u2019t Delay Getting Help For Hearing Loss"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"dads-out-to-eat-face\"

Dad’s typical “out to eat” face — unable to hear a word of the conversation.<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

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\u2019re also in his ears. Decades of roaring engines have had a major impact on his hearing.<\/p>\n

When we go to a loud restaurant, I\u2019ll watch his eyes glaze over as we chatter around him, or on our annual ride to look at Christmas lights, he\u2019ll 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\u2019ll likely never do anything about it.<\/p>\n

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\u2019d 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).<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a stigma around hearing loss that doesn\u2019t exist with other parts of aging. Got a bad hip? You get a hip replacement. Can\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

Not being able to hear can be very isolating\u2014both 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\u2019re misunderstood. You repeat everything. You\u2019re told to \u201cStop mumbling\u201d and to \u201cSpeak up!\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019s actually kind of ironic that many people won\u2019t admit hearing loss because they don\u2019t want to be \u201cold,\u201d but untreated hearing loss can actually speed up the aging the process.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re one of the 30-plus million seniors who doesn\u2019t 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\u2019t get that ability back. If you\u2019re a spouse or an adult child or a caregiver to one of these people, don\u2019t enable him to put off treatment. In other words, stop being his human hearing aid\u2014don\u2019t translate for him.<\/p>\n

People have many reasons not to get help for hearing loss, including cost, vanity, and complaints about the aids themselves. There\u2019s truth to all of these excuses.<\/p>\n

Hearing aids ARE expensive (we\u2019re lucky in Massachusetts that some insurances will cover them but if yours doesn\u2019t, 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\u2019t make you \u201cold,\u201d but leaving it untreated can.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s website at <\/em>www.salem.firstlighthomecare.com<\/em><\/a> or contact Molly at <\/em>781-691-5755\/mrowe@firstlighthomecare.com<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u2019re also in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":150,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-caring-for-aging-parents"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstlighthomecare.com\/home-healthcare-salem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstlighthomecare.com\/home-healthcare-salem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstlighthomecare.com\/home-healthcare-salem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstlighthomecare.com\/home-healthcare-salem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstlighthomecare.com\/home-healthcare-salem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstlighthomecare.com\/home-healthcare-salem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstlighthomecare.com\/home-healthcare-salem\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstlighthomecare.com\/home-healthcare-salem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstlighthomecare.com\/home-healthcare-salem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstlighthomecare.com\/home-healthcare-salem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}