SayWhatClub Weblog

“LET US HEAR FROM YOU”
SayWhatClub Weblog I've been traveling again, and as I have mentioned before, when I book my flights online I always check the “Hearing Impaired” box in the “Special Services” option, but rarely, am I ever approached by the flight attendant with regard ... Continue reading →
Tue, Jul 20 2010

AUDIOLOGISTS, TECHNOLOGY AND HEARING AIDS……oh my!
SayWhatClub Weblog Approximately a year ago, I felt it was time to get a new hearing aid. I felt my aid was no longer giving me what I needed to function both at work and socially.  I began to sense that I was ... Continue reading →
Sun, Jul 11 2010

Why I’m not ‘Hearing-Impaired’
SayWhatClub Weblog This happened about ten years ago as I was beginning to come to terms with my hearing loss.  Those who have experienced a progressive hearing loss like mine will understand.  When you grow up hearing, it sometimes takes a while to realize that you are no longer a ‘hearing’ person.  I guess part of it [...]
Mon, May 03 2010

LOSING MY HEARING, LOSING MY VISION OF INDEPENDENCE BY...
SayWhatClub Weblog I recently saw a Neuro-Otologist due to my experiencing dizziness. I am deaf in one ear and wear an aid on my good ear.   I was relieved to find out that there's a difference between dizziness and spinning and therefore, a diagnosis of Menieres was able to be ruled out. However, the Doctor was quick to note [...]
Fri, Apr 09 2010

STOP, THE WORLD IS SPINNING by Saytheword
SayWhatClub Weblog For the past two weeks, I've been slowly headed toward a new planet I never encountered but heard a great deal about.  The Planet Vertigo. The day it started was just a regular day when suddenly, I felt dizzy and unbalanced.  The world appeared to be leaning like the tower of Pisa. I thought to myself, I'm working too [...]
Sun, Mar 28 2010

HEARING AIDS, HEARING GADGETS AND HEARING LOSS by Saytheword
SayWhatClub Weblog When u look at all the technology out there from the beginning of their creation to its current status, you willl note that most technology started out large and clutsy looking and eventually the product was reduced in size BUT improved in its functioning purposes .  Look at computers, headphones, cellphones, xerox machines, fax machines, TTY's, [...]
Sat, Mar 06 2010

Choosing Quiet in a Noisy World
SayWhatClub Weblog No matter how good your hearing aids, there will always be some sound distortion, which is unfortunately directly proportionate to one’s hearing loss. A pretty good example of this would be my bi-weekly swim class.  I swim unaided.  There are about fifty women in my class.  You can imagine how the locker room sounds afterwards; women [...]
Thu, Feb 11 2010

One Red, One Blue
SayWhatClub Weblog I am traveling...  I just walked down to the lobby area of the hotel to get a cup of coffee.  As I was descending the stairs, a little girl, about age 7, exclaimed “Your shoes are different colors!!”  I had to laugh, as I've gotten so much mileage, literally, out of my odd matched pair of Crocs–one [...]
Thu, Feb 04 2010

Hearing Loss Isn’t Funny
SayWhatClub Weblog I don’t know how many of you watched the Biggest Loser this past season, but one of the contestants, Abby, lives my worst nightmare.  She lost her husband and kids after they were broadsided in a car accident.  I can’t think of anything worse.  I’m sure every woman in the world feels the same.  It [...]
Tue, Dec 22 2009

Study of People With Hearing Loss Reveals Reluctance to...
SayWhatClub Weblog We’re not alone. But it must seem that way to many people who are new to hearing loss and its impact on their daily lives. That’s one suggestion that can be drawn from the latest MarkeTrak survey of the hearing loss population in the United States . One of the key findings is that the country’s [...]
Thu, Dec 03 2009

Quality of Life Study for parents with deaf and/or hard of...
SayWhatClub Weblog The University of Washington is conducting a Quality of Life Study for Children who are deaf and hard of hearing.  They are looking for deaf and hard of hearing children and youth ages 5 to 18 and their parents for participation in the study (US residents only). Your involvement would be as simple as helping us [...]
Thu, Nov 12 2009

Clueless at the Ball
SayWhatClub Weblog This past weekend was the 234th Marine Corps Birthday Ball.  I had been looking forward to the Ball, but also had been dreading placing myself in the kind of situation I struggle with–a noisy crowd of strangers, numerous introductions, low lighting, music–the general roaring mix of 250 people in an enclosed space, and not a [...]
Mon, Nov 09 2009

Deafaphobia? Is it them or us?
SayWhatClub Weblog I have a bilateral sensorineural hearing loss.  We hear those words often but they mean different things to each individual.  I am only aided on my right ear because my left ear is totally unfriendly to any speech discrimination.  Or should I say, speech discrimination is unfriendly to my ear? I once tried an aid on [...]
Mon, Oct 05 2009

TELL ME WHAT YOU HEAR, AND I’LL TELL WHAT I SEE
SayWhatClub Weblog We all need a friend.  Someone to share thoughts with, laugh with, cry with.  Someone who will take the time to be what we need, and who can expect the same from us.  That might be especially true for those of us who face each day not hearing all we used to hear, all we want to hear, and [...]
Tue, Aug 25 2009

Not Your Mama’s Hearing Aids
SayWhatClub Weblog I remember the first time I saw a blue tooth in someone's ear.  I thought it was a super cool looking hearing aid.  Not long after, Oticon came out with their first ‘non-hearing-aid' aid, which they called a “hearing device.' The Delta (now called Dual)  is a colorful modern looking little triangular shaped thing that looks [...]
Mon, Aug 17 2009

Deaf Audiologist
SayWhatClub Weblog I sometimes wonder how audiologists can sell hearing aids they have never tried.  I realize not every audiologist can be hard of hearing or deaf, but because most aren’t, I wonder how it’s possible for them to know what we hear when we put on hearing aids or to understand our feelings about feedback and [...]
Sat, Aug 01 2009

Educating Cluelessness
SayWhatClub Weblog I have just about had it with people who totally do not understand hearing loss.  Sitting around the picnic table on my deck with family, when suddenly my niece turns to me, taps me on the shoulder and says out loud,  “are your hearing aids on?”  I looked at her with complete contempt and disgust.  Afterall, she [...]
Mon, Jul 20 2009

Captioning the Internet by Jan Christensen
SayWhatClub Weblog Target was sued recently because its website was inaccessible to the blind. A court ruled that a retailer's website is a virtual “location,” and must be as accessible as an actual store. In June of 2008, Representatives Edward Markey (D-MA), Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, and Heather Wilson (R-NM) introduce...
Mon, Jul 13 2009

More on SayWhatClub: by Jan Christensen
SayWhatClub Weblog More than 36 million people in America alone have a hearing loss, with an estimated 278 million worldwide according to a World Health Organization (WHO) survey in 2005, ranging from moderate to profound. Hearing loss is the third most common health problem in America, behind only arthritis and heart disease. A small group of people [...]
Fri, Jul 03 2009

The hearing aid industry and audiologists
SayWhatClub Weblog I'm totally baffled and perturbed by the hearing aid industry and audiologists.  I've just about had it.  I recently interviewed two hearing aid companies:  Oticon and Sonova Holding HG.  You can read the interviews yourself at [link] the Sonova interview at: [link] In case you were not aware, Phonak and Unitron are under Sonova AG Holding.  [...]
Tue, Jun 23 2009

Silent News– A New Trend
SayWhatClub Weblog Like many people I get my news on-line.   Unlike many people I don't hear very well.  Over the past few years there's been a trend toward offering breaking news in video format.  Unfortunately the videos aren't captioned.    Take today's news.  Yahoo offered a video simulation of the French Airbus that went down over the Atlantic [...]
Sat, Jun 06 2009

Lets talk about hearing loss cluelessness
SayWhatClub Weblog I HATE when people just don't get it.  Hearing people that is.  I use to hate when people with hearing loss are in denial that they are losing their hearing and these are bright intelligent people, who rather suffer and pretend than look into wearing a hearing aid. I don't want to hate hearing people who don't understand [...]
Sat, May 23 2009

Getting to know us is to love us
SayWhatClub Weblog It all started nearly 14 years ago.  I was one of New Zealand’s first cochlear Implantee’s back in 1993.  In fact there was very little information about Cochlear implants on the web back then.  As editor of New Zealand’s cochlear implant newsletter I was always looking for articles, and searching on the internet for them.   So [...]
Mon, May 11 2009

Hearing loss at age 45
SayWhatClub Weblog John Samanic said May 1, 2009 at 12:36 pm e Hello, My hearing loss began in late 2003 at the age of 45. My mother and my maternal grandfather both lost their hearing at about the same age. I am on my second set of hearing aids, which, thankfully, enables me to hear, but not so well. [...]
Sun, May 10 2009

I’d rather be Hearing-impaired than Listening impaired
SayWhatClub Weblog This morning I woke up coughing, again. My head, back and chest hurt. My throat was raw and swollen. I have been sick for over a week. With these latest warnings of a near swine flu pandemic, a doctor seemed like a good idea. The receptionist was able to squeeze me in with someone I [...]
Tue, Apr 28 2009

Is There a Hard of Hearing Culture? by Shanna Groves /...
SayWhatClub Weblog  In my soon-to-be-published novel Lip Reader, a church pastor goes out of his way to make sure his deaf congregants understand the music and sermon. He uses sign language while preaching. The music is interpreted through sign and a loud beating drum. Any deaf person visiting this church for the first time would likely feel [...]
Fri, Apr 17 2009

I AM dEAF
SayWhatClub Weblog I am finding that telling people, “I am deaf.”, nets so much more understanding and accommodation than any of the other descriptions (hard of hearing, hearing impaired, et al.) I have tried over the years. Before joining the SayWhatClub (SWC), I would have felt like a fraud using “deaf” to describe my severe/profound hearing loss [...]
Sun, Mar 29 2009

Say What Club Convention
SayWhatClub Weblog Last summer I wrote extensively in my own blog about the two hearing loss conventions I went to.  One of those was the Say What Club Convention in Philadelphia.      Over the past several years, the SWC and their conventions have helped shape my self awareness and growth in dealing with hearing loss.  For our workshops, we [...]
Tue, Mar 10 2009

All In A Days Work
SayWhatClub Weblog 14/365 - the librarian in me, originally uploaded by ~shepdc~. Last week it happened again. At the beginning of the day, I went out to my car for something and accidentally locked myself out of the building. I do this about once a year. In fact, most of us do. There were two people inside– one, [...]
Mon, Feb 23 2009

Wonderful Silence - Wonderful Sounds by Virginia M.
SayWhatClub Weblog Wonderful as defined by Webster is a feeling aroused by something that is unexpected, marvelous and excellent; an event or thing which causes astonishment, admiration and wonder. A once popular band leader was well known for his utterance of the words “Wonderful, Wonderful.” My previous wonderful, wonderful vanished following the onset of my hearing loss [...]
Mon, Feb 16 2009

Deathness
SayWhatClub Weblog My mom passed away last week at the age of 89.  And though she was blind for many years, at the age of 89 she could hear you walking into a room, hear a conversation two rooms away and tell u where something fell and find it. Though we expect our parents to die, the reality [...]
Thu, Feb 05 2009

Foreign Travel Often Easier Than Domestic
SayWhatClub Weblog I love to travel and caught that bug early at the age of fourteen. In 1974, my deaf grandmother, who did not wear hearing aids and did not know and use sign language, was planning a trip from Ohio to Texas to visit her oldest daughter, my aunt. Because of her failing health [...]
Thu, Jan 22 2009

Aimin’ To Misbehave
SayWhatClub Weblog Funny Faces 4, originally uploaded by jaaron. For Christmas my daughter gave me a tote bag with the words, “Well behaved women seldom make history.” I just happened to glance at it this afternoon and it got me thinking about some of the more noteworthy misbehaving women of our times. There have been several, [...]
Tue, Jan 13 2009

Cochlear Implant Frustrations by Robyn Carter
SayWhatClub Weblog   It’s now official. I have just been diagnosed with depression for the first time in my life. Simply because of the frustration I’m having with lack of hearing, and lack of action in terms of ACC funding my new implant.  ACC is our Accident Compensation Corporation.  When you have an accident in New Zealand, ACC [...]
Tue, Jan 06 2009

TIRED OF SAYING WHAT?
SayWhatClub Weblog SWC is an acronym for the SayWhatClub.  I joined SWC back in 2001 when I was at my lowest point and feeling alienated from everything around me because of my hearing loss.  What I discovered was many people who appeared to have gone through what I did but were in a better place in their [...]
Fri, Dec 19 2008

When Family and Friends Just Don’t Get It
SayWhatClub Weblog I've spent the past couple weeks visiting out of state family and friends I don't often see.  Often when visiting people, they like to take you around to see the sites.  We did a lot of site-seeing this time as usual.  Whenever we go somewhere that offers a short, non-captioned film clip, or tape recorded presentation, a play, a [...]
Sun, Dec 07 2008

A New Eye Doctor, A Sight for Sore Ears
SayWhatClub Weblog I went to the eye doctor last week in order to make one last effort at seeing better with contact lenses.  I have worn contact lenses to correct my vision since I was a young teenager, many moons ago, but as my mid forties passed before my eyes (pun intended) I began needing a little help seeing [...]
Sun, Nov 23 2008

Coping with hearing loss
SayWhatClub Weblog Most recently on one of our lists, a lengthy discussion became somewhat of a battle as to the use of the word “COPING.”  Many people felt that coping was an important part of accepting our hearing loss.  Others believed that the word coping is a cop out that focuses on acceptance of being less of a person. Personally, [...]
Fri, Nov 07 2008

All That A Whisper Is
SayWhatClub Weblog When talking with a friend that I hadn't seen since childhood, I told him of my severe and profound hearing loss.  He asked if I had hearing aids, and when I answered that I had tried them extensively, but hadn't been able to benefit from being aided, he wondered at what I was missing?  “...music, [...]
Wed, Oct 22 2008

Fast Talking Friends
SayWhatClub Weblog This is NOT a rant (well, maybe a little) - just some existential grumbling. Great news! My recently acquired BTE hearing aids have made a huge improvement in my speech recognition. But mind you, improvement is just that - my SR still isn't “normal”; I still need most speakers to face me, and though group conversations [...]
Thu, Oct 09 2008

I’m Tired Of Feeling Excluded
SayWhatClub Weblog This is a rant, but if it educates just one person with perfect hearing I'll feel it was a success.  I'm tired of being excluded from office chat at work, from family chat at home and from general discussions everywhere else.    Friday morning, like every other morning I work, four of us were getting ready for [...]
Sun, Sep 28 2008

I Hear You Laughing
SayWhatClub Weblog I began this post a while back and then put it aside, unsure as to whether I actually wanted to share it, but it seemed fitting to submit a post that includes a poem written just a few days after 9/11/2001, this same week seven years later. It is often true of those with a lessened [...]
Tue, Sep 16 2008

On Being Hard-of-hearing/deaf and COOL!
SayWhatClub Weblog I don't know if some of you do this, but I have this knack for noticing other people's hearing aids.  Last week I met a young woman in her twenties with a beige in-the-ear aid.  Usually when I meet someone else wearing aids, I like to ask them about it.  Not that I'm nosey, but [...]
Wed, Sep 10 2008

On the Ground in a Hearing World - Getting What You Need
SayWhatClub Weblog For starters, this isn't just a post about getting accommodations for hearing loss; interpreters, CART, captioned TV/movies/phones, etc. Nor is it about picking your way through the mindless bureaucracy of getting assistance for the above (and hearing aids, etc). This post is mainly about strategies for coping with hearing loss in real time, with real [...]
Sat, Sep 06 2008

Relearning Life
SayWhatClub Weblog Have you seen the becomeanex.org commercials that focus on relearning life without cigarettes?  The subjects of these commercials are going through their daily routines, but seem to be having trouble with even the most simple of tasks because of not physically having a cigarette in their hand.  I know you have seen them: A woman stumbles to her car, fumbling [...]
Fri, Aug 29 2008

Captioning the world and speaking of politics….
SayWhatClub Weblog I don't know about your town but even here in NYC, I can't find enough theatres that have the most recent films with closed captioning.  Usually the most recent films will be shown in Manhattan.  Not exactly the most convenient place for me to get to.  I realize we're suppose to be grateful that there [...]
Sat, Aug 23 2008

Make An Offer. . .But look at me first
SayWhatClub Weblog It's garage sale season and mine definitely needs to be cleared.  The other day,  my mother– garage sale queen that she is– took one look at the mountain of junk piled up where our cars should be, and declared it was time to have a sale.     On a closet cleaning frenzy since January, I've been hauling trunk loads of [...]
Thu, Aug 14 2008

MISSED/MISSED IN THE DARK by Michele
SayWhatClub Weblog When you rely on visual clues, such as lip/speech reading, body language, facial expression, and even sign language, in order to hear, it becomes a fact of life that communication during the darker hours will prove a challenge, and eventually an impossibility.  Take away adequate lighting in any situation and your lack of hearing slowly [...]
Tue, Aug 05 2008

Please Face Me - And Make it a Double (part two)
SayWhatClub Weblog 7/28/2008 - Skirmish Lost - War Declared! The following transcript of a conversation I had today is not complete or perfect - it's from my best recollection upon arriving home in rather profound emotional turmoil and disappointment. I had to scribble it on paper as fast as I could, while it was fresh in my memory. [...]
Fri, Aug 01 2008

Please Face Me - And Make it a Double (part one)
SayWhatClub Weblog Questions, questions. “What do you think made you start drinking?” Laundry List: - Pending divorce and expected result: bankruptcy - Looming debts rivaling the national budget - Loss of driving ability from sporadic bouts of vertigo (fear factor) - Tinnitus - Hearing loss “What - wait, you have hearing loss?” I read your lips and guess much of ...
Wed, Jul 30 2008