It's a situation I find very difficult; my mum is humungously deaf, but refuses to try a hearing aid. She would rather that the rest of us just talk to her more loudly, but gets really offended when she perceives that we're shouting at her. Well, I am anyway - partly because she can't hear me when I don't, partly because having to repeat myself in increasing volume, makes me grumpy.
Oh, if only she weren't so stubbornly negative about the whole idea. She knows people who have hearing aids, you see, and they tell her that they are a waste of money. The audiologist says that hearing aid effectiveness depends on several factors - how much you're willing to spend on one, how motivated you are to make a habit of wearing it, and the unique characteristics of your own hearing problem. Oh, if only my mum had friends who successfully wore their aids, people who weren't too stingy to go for the top models, and who were still on speaking terms with her (my mum seems to fall out with people on the merest of perceived grievances).
Oh, if only I don't become as deaf and as stubborn as that, when I get to 80. Thought I probably will - genetics is as good as fate.
5 comments:
Oh you poor love, it certainly can be hard with parents.
When I was visiting with my boyfriend for the first time in meeting his parents. His Dad was hard of hearing and the level his Mum spoke often, his Dad would pull her up and say "Im not deaf you know".
I found it funny him saying that because if she did not speak loudly he could not hear her at all. So I take it there is a level of loudness.
But on the bright side you'll get to be 80.
chazza: I think it's just that there comes a point when talking really loudly becomes the more emotion-laden shouting - the kind that means the speaker is getting a bit pissed off.
nigel: unless the boy gets fed up with my deafness and leaves me on an ice floe to get eaten by penguins (there being no polar bears in the southern hemisphere).
What did you say?
Just kidding
angela: I was trying to give her a mobile phone number :-)
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