Normal is a word for an idea that doesn't have a whole lot of meaning. It's based entirely on what we're used to.
The spark for my thinking about this recently was hearing aids. I cannot remember not wearing hearing aids, not having them be a part of my life. To me, this is normal. (There's a side topic here about how I view my wheelchair and crutches; because the body I live in is the body I identify with, I see them as liberating, as opposed to if I saw 'my body' as being more average, in what I would consider a more socially acceptable form of body dysmorphia. In such a situation, I might perceive these tools the way TABs - the Temporarily Able Bodied often do. This viewpoint, when I explain it, often is seen as a rationalization, but I am being completely frank here. But I digress.) This is why I don't like the term Late Deafened, and don't feel that it describes me. There is a cultural connotation that goes along with the term that doesn't fit who I am. While it is true that I have a progressive hearing loss, and that I have gone from being hearing (for a few short - but critical, from a linguistic perspective - years) to hard of hearing to a place now that is somewhere between hard of hearing and deaf, I am not Late Deafened. I cannot remember a time when I didn't lip read, use captions, use a non-auditory alarm clock, and so on. To me, a Late Deafened person is someone who lived with full hearing for most of their life, then became deaf or hard of hearing at least after adolescence - and that's not me.
All of that was background. Now I'll get to my point. I wear my hearing aids not quite every minute of the day - I take them out now and then to enjoy the silence (excellent link there, BTW), or for various other reasons. But they're something that I miss when they're not there. When it's raining out, and I put them in my backpack to keep them dry, I feel naked; something's missing. Not merely the sound, but the inside of my ear is now cold, wet - there's wind blowing in there. It feels very wrong. But one of the major 'advances' in hearing aid and ear mold tech in the last decade was the "open fit" mold - a mold that got rid of that stopped up effect. When I first heard about this, I was quite relieved to learn that it wasn't available for someone with my level of amplification - at that age (young teen at most - more likely late elementary or middle school), I wasn't quite sure how to justify that I felt uncomfortable without something in my ear.
Right now, I'm wearing a pair of loaner aids, trying out a new line of aids made by Phonak (my first two set of aids were Phonaks; my last set was Oticon). I really like these - not enough power (although the pair I'm actually buying in 2-3 weeks has more gain), but they're excellent in noise. Or perhaps I should say, better in noise. My standards for hearing in noise are pretty low - anything I can get. And they do some nice things with sudden loud noises, so that I'm not startled or hurt. There are still some things about the aid that irritate me a bit - the user interface is a step backwards from the old style, for instance. But overall, I like them, which I suppose is why I'm buying these top of the line aids instead of the cheaper knockoff crap.
The one thing that I'm still not happy with, though - and here we reach the point of this longwinded post - is their size. My old aids were quite a bit larger than this. Probably not something you'd notice by looking at me (although I'd be surprised if anyone other than the interpreters I work with noticed that I had new aids), but it is something that I can tell immediately by looking or by wearing. I think the motivation for the change was largely cosmetic, but possibly it was for comfort as well. But having worn large aids for much of my life, it feels wrong. Like it's going to fall off, at times (even though, from an objective standpoint, it sits very solidly behind my ear). And on top of that, the battery is a size smaller, and correspondingly, the battery life is less. I'd guess about half to two thirds of what it once was. I'm willing to sacrifice battery life for improvements - but to me, the improvements worth sacrificing for are improvements in hearing and in features. Because I'm used to large aids - because they fit into my definition of normal - cosmetic and fashion improvements in size don't impress me. So sacrificing battery life for those, well ... it's not the choice I would've made.
This is not to say that cosmetic improvments are undesireable - I think that the pair of aids I'm getting in a few weeks looks a lot better than the first set I ever had, and the geek-chic of clear aids still appeals to me. But I don't see it as something to sacrifice utility for. Especially with all these Bluetooth headsets around now (I've been chastised for not removing my headset when speaking to people ... never mind that it's not Bluetooth, and that without it we wouldn't be having a conversation at all ... oops), and the usefulness of being able to point to a hearing aid while explaining that I'm hard of hearing.
One last thing, then I'll shut up. The (somewhat) new Oticon Delta looks kinda cute, and I really like the color choices (come on guys, give us that range of colors in your power models), although some of its looks are another one of those "what you're used to" things (namely, it's way too small for me to feel comfortable with, and the tubing and the ear plug, while more comfortable for people who are new to aids, are too different for my taste. Urgh - I'm using a plug kind of like that in my right ear now, and I hate it.) It's nice to see that the companies are trying to get away from their "little kids and geriatrics" image. Obviously their motivation is profit, but I think there are benefits for consumers in the long run, both in terms of public perception, and in terms of better - more featureful and aesthetically appealing - aids.
Plus, what the hell am I going to use as an identifier in Deaf-friendly situations if I don't have visible aids?
The spark for my thinking about this recently was hearing aids. I cannot remember not wearing hearing aids, not having them be a part of my life. To me, this is normal. (There's a side topic here about how I view my wheelchair and crutches; because the body I live in is the body I identify with, I see them as liberating, as opposed to if I saw 'my body' as being more average, in what I would consider a more socially acceptable form of body dysmorphia. In such a situation, I might perceive these tools the way TABs - the Temporarily Able Bodied often do. This viewpoint, when I explain it, often is seen as a rationalization, but I am being completely frank here. But I digress.) This is why I don't like the term Late Deafened, and don't feel that it describes me. There is a cultural connotation that goes along with the term that doesn't fit who I am. While it is true that I have a progressive hearing loss, and that I have gone from being hearing (for a few short - but critical, from a linguistic perspective - years) to hard of hearing to a place now that is somewhere between hard of hearing and deaf, I am not Late Deafened. I cannot remember a time when I didn't lip read, use captions, use a non-auditory alarm clock, and so on. To me, a Late Deafened person is someone who lived with full hearing for most of their life, then became deaf or hard of hearing at least after adolescence - and that's not me.
All of that was background. Now I'll get to my point. I wear my hearing aids not quite every minute of the day - I take them out now and then to enjoy the silence (excellent link there, BTW), or for various other reasons. But they're something that I miss when they're not there. When it's raining out, and I put them in my backpack to keep them dry, I feel naked; something's missing. Not merely the sound, but the inside of my ear is now cold, wet - there's wind blowing in there. It feels very wrong. But one of the major 'advances' in hearing aid and ear mold tech in the last decade was the "open fit" mold - a mold that got rid of that stopped up effect. When I first heard about this, I was quite relieved to learn that it wasn't available for someone with my level of amplification - at that age (young teen at most - more likely late elementary or middle school), I wasn't quite sure how to justify that I felt uncomfortable without something in my ear.
Right now, I'm wearing a pair of loaner aids, trying out a new line of aids made by Phonak (my first two set of aids were Phonaks; my last set was Oticon). I really like these - not enough power (although the pair I'm actually buying in 2-3 weeks has more gain), but they're excellent in noise. Or perhaps I should say, better in noise. My standards for hearing in noise are pretty low - anything I can get. And they do some nice things with sudden loud noises, so that I'm not startled or hurt. There are still some things about the aid that irritate me a bit - the user interface is a step backwards from the old style, for instance. But overall, I like them, which I suppose is why I'm buying these top of the line aids instead of the cheaper knockoff crap.
The one thing that I'm still not happy with, though - and here we reach the point of this longwinded post - is their size. My old aids were quite a bit larger than this. Probably not something you'd notice by looking at me (although I'd be surprised if anyone other than the interpreters I work with noticed that I had new aids), but it is something that I can tell immediately by looking or by wearing. I think the motivation for the change was largely cosmetic, but possibly it was for comfort as well. But having worn large aids for much of my life, it feels wrong. Like it's going to fall off, at times (even though, from an objective standpoint, it sits very solidly behind my ear). And on top of that, the battery is a size smaller, and correspondingly, the battery life is less. I'd guess about half to two thirds of what it once was. I'm willing to sacrifice battery life for improvements - but to me, the improvements worth sacrificing for are improvements in hearing and in features. Because I'm used to large aids - because they fit into my definition of normal - cosmetic and fashion improvements in size don't impress me. So sacrificing battery life for those, well ... it's not the choice I would've made.
This is not to say that cosmetic improvments are undesireable - I think that the pair of aids I'm getting in a few weeks looks a lot better than the first set I ever had, and the geek-chic of clear aids still appeals to me. But I don't see it as something to sacrifice utility for. Especially with all these Bluetooth headsets around now (I've been chastised for not removing my headset when speaking to people ... never mind that it's not Bluetooth, and that without it we wouldn't be having a conversation at all ... oops), and the usefulness of being able to point to a hearing aid while explaining that I'm hard of hearing.
One last thing, then I'll shut up. The (somewhat) new Oticon Delta looks kinda cute, and I really like the color choices (come on guys, give us that range of colors in your power models), although some of its looks are another one of those "what you're used to" things (namely, it's way too small for me to feel comfortable with, and the tubing and the ear plug, while more comfortable for people who are new to aids, are too different for my taste. Urgh - I'm using a plug kind of like that in my right ear now, and I hate it.) It's nice to see that the companies are trying to get away from their "little kids and geriatrics" image. Obviously their motivation is profit, but I think there are benefits for consumers in the long run, both in terms of public perception, and in terms of better - more featureful and aesthetically appealing - aids.
Plus, what the hell am I going to use as an identifier in Deaf-friendly situations if I don't have visible aids?
posted by ismith at 6:28 PM
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