Have you gotten your hearing tested?

[LeCherie]

My hearing was damaged by an ear infection when I was a toddler, but my mother denied to my teachers and everyone that I had any hearing trouble even though the school testing program indicated I needed to do something.  The tinnitus has probrably been with me forever, but I rarely noticed it.  Researchers still have not found what causes it.

Yes, with the CI you have to change the program according to what environment you are in.  It's not always easy.  When I go to yoga, the classroom has plaster walls over brick and real hardwood floors.  I've not found the best setting for there, so I have to turn my mat to watch what the instructor is taking us into.  

For those of us on MediCare, they won't do the CI surgery until we can comprehend less than 40% of the sentences being said on certain DVDs they supply the audi.  I'm very close, and frustrated, with my other ear.  But I'm still comprehending like 43% and I'm tested annually.

Also, with SS only income, MediCare paid nearly the entire cost of my CI.  I paid less than $200 for the entire procedure, equipment, and follow-up.

[GailL1]

LeCherie,

My mother was deaf bassed on the scale but she was very good at reading lips of those who would face her, talking and pronounce their words.

It was awful when she had to be hospitalized or go to the rehab place (nursing home). No matter how many signs I posted in the room and on her, people just didn't change their normal behavior towards her.

I have tinnitus in my right ear. I suspect I know the cause of it since a CT Scan showed no brain problems. There is only minor hearing loss and that has not changed in years. However, if I tune in the sound, it seems to be louder now.

I use various types of white noise to block it when I am going to sleep and this has worked for years. Otherwise, it is just a case of ignoring it during the day. Often I just tell it to "shut up"!

A friend of mine had meningitis, left him deaf and he now has a cochlear implant but he still has differentiating problems with multiple sounds in a room. So he prefers to be in relatively quite places where not many different sounds are going on,

Do you find that with your cochlear implant?

One of my neighbors' grandson has a genetic problem where he lost his hearing at a very young age, he got the cochlear implants and now he is a teenager and it doesn't seem to slow him down at all although with the decline in his vision from the same genetic problem, he will never drive.

I am not really up on when and how cochlear implants work. I just hope that I don't lose any more hearing but since it seem everybody on my mother's side of the family had some hearing loss, mine could have some familiar bearing.

However, I contribute the tinnitus to loud noises in my youth, too much aspirin and an extreme case of TMJ; could be some stress relationship in there too.

[retiredtraveler]

I would do this but I have 'selective hearing loss' when DW is around. If I got tested and found there were no problems, that wouldn't work any longer. 

[LeCherie]

Years ago a co-worker pointed out to me that I could not hear him talking to me until he got within 10 feet.  So I went the an ENT doctor who determined that I needed an hearing aid.  When the audioligist tested me my hearing was 42dB loss in one ear and 47dB loss in the other.  I chose to get just one HA, it was an 'in the ear' or ITE as it's called.  As I've aged I've gotten tested more and more often since once hearing is damaged, it continues to deteriorate. 

It's very frustrating when people don't go to an audi.  I got my first pair a few years ago and paid them off while living on Florida's measly unemployment.  

My hearing in the ear that was 'naked' for so long has deteriorated in leaps and bounds, so now I have a Cochlear Implant in that ear.

It's also most irritating and abusive to the Deaf Community when people refer to their hearing loss as ' being deaf'.  The 40dB loss I tested at first is at well below the comminication level.  Once your hearing reaches 60dB loss, you no longer clearly hear words; at 70dB loss you have lost so much in 'words' that even whole sentences may not make sense; at 90dB loss your are severely deaf, then at 100dB you are totally deaf.

[AARPTeri]

Statistics show that hearing loss has doubled in the past 30 years.  Have you tested your hearing?  Do you have a baseline to test again for the future?  Curious how many people test their hearing as parf their health routines.