One Benefit of hearing loss

podiecat

podiecat

New Member
Joined
Sep 13, 2010
Messages
127
Reaction score
0
I was visiting with a friend the other evening in Barnes and Noble cafe. I have severe hearing loss and can not use HA due to some complicated issues. I must watch faces to have any chance of understanding well enough to have a conversation.

All of a sudden she says, "Don't you hear that wretched Christmas music?!? It's driving me insane!!!". Thankfully I did not even know the music was playing. LOL
 
ROFL I have a severe loss in my right ear just right now and a moderate/severe in my left ear which was gone back up from severe :3
 
I can think of several: shutting out traffic noise when going for a walk, turning them off so you can read on the train (and not hear the train approaching either), turning them off when bored at a meeting, tuning out people you can't stand at work, and my recent favorite, shutting them off when going to the health club so you don't have to listen to that crap the whole time you're there....

Laura
 
Last edited:
I turn mine off all the time too. It's weird that when my loss wasn't as bad, I never turned them off but now that it's worse I wish I could leave them off a LOT. Last week we had our test in ASL class and the students were talking and I couldn't concentrate so I just turned them off. My teacher (Deaf) noticed and laughed her ass off.
 
I live just off the interstate, and others complain that the traffic noise bothers them. Even with my HA's it is no problem-- maybe it is the really low frequencies, or the fact that when alone I am listening to music almost constantly--
 
podiecat said:
I was visiting with a friend the other evening in Barnes and Noble cafe. I have severe hearing loss and can not use HA due to some complicated issues. I must watch faces to have any chance of understanding well enough to have a conversation.

All of a sudden she says, "Don't you hear that wretched Christmas music?!? It's driving me insane!!!". Thankfully I did not even know the music was playing. LOL
Click to expand...


Thats so funny XD pretty much the same thing happens to me all the time around the holidays. I work at jcpenney and my coworkers are ALWAYS complaining about the repetitive christmas music, and im thankful i cant hear it because i cant understand how they can take 8-10 hrs of 10 or so christmas songs on repeat O.o lol!
 
podiecat said:
I was visiting with a friend the other evening in Barnes and Noble cafe. I have severe hearing loss and can not use HA due to some complicated issues. I must watch faces to have any chance of understanding well enough to have a conversation.

All of a sudden she says, "Don't you hear that wretched Christmas music?!? It's driving me insane!!!". Thankfully I did not even know the music was playing. LOL
Click to expand...

Actually just recently someone mentioned they like Wendy's restaurant on some specific day because they have classical music then. I didn't even know they played music at all.

So I imagine there are lots of things I don't know about. :P
 
Yep they play music at my work too "relaxing" music, but my coworkers are forever complaining about it. I haven't been able to hear for at least a year, probably more. I lost more hearing and my aid wasn't cutting it anymore. Got new aids in the summer, and still couldn't hear it. But last week my audi did something with the compression, so they don't dampen sound so much, NOW i can hear it....and it'd horrid. I don't know who decided it's relaxing music, but apparently they smoke crack.
 
Bottesini said:
Actually just recently someone mentioned they like Wendy's restaurant on some specific day because they have classical music then. I didn't even know they played music at all.

So I imagine there are lots of things I don't know about. :P
Click to expand...

Yea, same here but thats ok. We just have to make the best of what we have. :)
 
ambrosia said:
Yep they play music at my work too "relaxing" music, but my coworkers are forever complaining about it. I haven't been able to hear for at least a year, probably more. I lost more hearing and my aid wasn't cutting it anymore. Got new aids in the summer, and still couldn't hear it. But last week my audi did something with the compression, so they don't dampen sound so much, NOW i can hear it....and it'd horrid. I don't know who decided it's relaxing music, but apparently they smoke crack.
Click to expand...

For music, you can use a telecoil just like people with hearing aids did for older telephones, the speakers in headphones have coils as well. This will cut out background noise. You can also use an FM system which will do the same thing and depending on the system might even be clearer.

Sadly, I can't hear through the steel guitars of the Rolling Stones song Some Girls anymore so I can't hear the lyrics, certain music is hard to listen to.

In this sense, you can hear better than a hearing person with no background noise.
 
I'm hearing so I can't escape noise completely,
But usually when I'm going to a store (especially one that's nuts about seasonal marketing), I will sometimes wear gummi in-ear earbuds that function as both headphones and earplugs.
All the seasonal music drives me absolutely batty too (because there's only a couple dozen songs that you can play for xmas) so when I don't even notice it, it is the best feeling ever because it feels like I am winning over the store because the store can't make me listen to their hyped up x-mas music anymore. hahahaha

The earplug part blocks out most of the outside sound (store music, other people talking), and the headphone part provides some kind of distraction (my own music!) so I don't focus on the muffled sounds from around me. And I can keep the volume very low and still hear it because outside noise is blocked, which saves my ears and my battery life.

Unfortunately if I want to read or study... this doesn't work too well. It's great to block out other people, but my own music is very distracting and it can throw me off task and prevent me from focusing... in these cases I wait until night or go borrow a lonely study room so I can be by myself.

Just yesterday I was working in a quiet classroom with a few other people, and one boystarted swearing at his phone. In went in my earbuds.
 
Last edited:
I turn off my hearing aids a lot to help my concentration. I used to do it at my last job a lot and I think it ticked off my coworkers, because they didn't like having to tap me on the shoulder to get my attention. :P (Well, they were talking all the time and I couldn't understand them anyway with my back to them working on my stuff, so might as well turn them off. lol)

VacationGuy, interesting didn't know that about headphone speakers. I just tried it and it was much more muted with telecoil. I had to crank the volume all the way up, too.
 
DeafBadger said:
I turn off my hearing aids a lot to help my concentration. I used to do it at my last job a lot and I think it ticked off my coworkers, because they didn't like having to tap me on the shoulder to get my attention. :P (Well, they were talking all the time and I couldn't understand them anyway with my back to them working on my stuff, so might as well turn them off. lol)

VacationGuy, interesting didn't know that about headphone speakers. I just tried it and it was much more muted with telecoil. I had to crank the volume all the way up, too.
Click to expand...

I've been doing this at work too to shut people out so I can concentrate and I've noticed my boss doesn't realize I'm doing it so I try to keep it on. Most people though (boss included) tap my desk or tap me on the shoulder. I didn't know about the telecoil working with music either.....

Laura
 
I can appreciate it yes, but......I dislike people with no hearing loss pointing out how "lucky" I am not to be hearing something annoying though, makes me want to knock their teeth down their throat. Okay maybe not that bad, but certainly look at them and ask if they really want to think about what they just said for a few minute longer.
 
Last edited:
ambrosia said:
I can appreciate it yes, but......I dislike people with no hearing loss pointing out how "lucky" I am not to be hearing something annoying though, makes me want to knock their teeth down their throat. Okay maybe not that bad, but certainly look at them and ask if they really want to think about what they just said for a few minute longer.
Click to expand...

Yeah the whole "lucky"comment comment always hit a nerve with me, but my coworkers and i now like to give each other crap to show we like each other lol we just love laughing and it passes the time. I give out as much crap as anyone else jokingly of course, so a few people that know about my hearing loss will throw a comment or two in, but i understand that when people make comments like the "lucky" comment they dont mean it in a bad way if anything just rub it in their face you dont have to suffer through the music. XDhaha but many many people are pretty ignorant about hearing loss and deaf culture so from their perspective they are making a sincere comment, as silly as it seems after it comes out ;)
 
caz12 said:
i miss bird song
Click to expand...

Yes, me too. And the peeper frogs in the summer. And sweet baby sounds and toddler voices...

I thought I could not hear my big mushy Maine coon cat purring anymore but the other night he was laying on my left shoulder right against that ear while I was on the couch.... Heavenly!... A warm, velvet purrrrrrr.
 
One big benefit that I can think of is....cats are king/queens. They'll expect you to learn to Lmeow" like they do. Now, we can tell cats we're deaf so we can weasel out of learning to "meow" like cats.
 
Back
Top