My hearing loss journey

I've been living with hearing loss for the past two decades. I passed several hearing tests as a child, but in college I remember not being able to hear a professor without my glasses. I realize in hindsight I was reading lips. About ten years ago, I revealed to my nurse practitioner that I watched tv with closed captioning and she sent me for a hearing test. I was shocked when the audiologist recommended hearing aids. Because he pushed hard, even suggesting I take out additional grad school loans for the purchase, I was skeptical. The harder someone tries to sell me something, the less I want it.

But that failed hearing test was a revelation. I couldn't hear the person next to me at loud social gatherings. In quiet settings, I would stand close to a speaker and stair at their mouth. I couldn't discern half of what people with soft voices would say. I got a job that required listening to all sorts of people speak at large gatherings. Understanding speech was requiring special focus. For example, if I didn't see a person before they addressed me, I would miss the first few words because it would take a moment to intensify my concentration.

Periodic tests confirm that while my hearing is bad, it hasn't worsened in recent years. However, my awareness of the problem and understanding of treatment options made me experience my deficiency more intensely. Audiologists helped me understand that with moderate hearing loss in the higher frequencies, I struggled to hear consonants. The meant that although I would hear a voice, the words lacked the form that consonants give. It is like seeing a featureless face.

So I decide to purchase hearing aids. The industry is very hard to navigate. Imaging never having owned, driven, or ridden in an automobile, and then trying to buy one. Working with my insurance company to make use of their meager benefit was confusing and frustrating. Finding a provider I can trust was difficult too. In the end, a friend with hearing aids provided personal guidance and advocated for me. I'm a frugal, natural skeptical, and arguably educated person who is on the early end of middle age, and I required an advocate to steer me through the process. I worry that greedy hearing aid salespeople could easily screw with less resourceful people and seniors in particular.

At any rate, I budgeted for the multi-thousand-dollar out-of-pocket expense and made the leap. I walked out of the audiologist's office overwhelmed by the ambient sounds of birds and cars. And I delighted in the crisp and clear sound of my coworkers voices. I began to take in my new world of sound as I heard the whisper of the wind, raindrops tapping on my umbrella, and the hum of the refrigerator. It has been a pleasure to absorb the new sounds in various environments.

While intensity of the new ambient noises was bothersome, I understood my brain was gradually adjusting to process the new range of sounds. After just days, my auditory experience feels natural and I am now wholly dependent on the hearing aids. In fact, there is an ironic sensation when I take them out. Without them, my ears feel clogged. With the aids in, my ears feel clear. I do hear an artificial edge to some sounds, but I accept that my aided hearing just won't be as perfect as natural, unaided, normal hearing. But it sure is hugely better than my unaided hearing.

My story has a happy ending. I had the wherewithal to make an informed purchase of a device to boost my deficient higher frequencies and the improvement is fabulous. But hearing aids are hugely expensive and insurance seems to only cover a fraction. Many just can't afford them. And there is a wide range of type and severity of hearing loss that people experience. Some have such impaired hearing that the benefit of hearing aids gets to to a place where they still struggle to communicate. And the miracle of cochlear implants allowing fully deaf people to hear is actually quite limited. The sound cochlear users experience is quite crude and requires work to learn to process and interpret.

So that is my story. There is more I may write about in future posts. I may want to talk about my internalized ableism that made me hesitate to wear hearing aids that would make my disability visible. And I am only about a week into this new life, so I may have additional thoughts as I continue to live it. Either way, I hope that sharing this is helpful to others suffering from hearing loss.

The Not So Straight Life of Art Pepper

Art Pepper is a renowned saxophonist and lifelong drug addict with a story worth telling. As Laurie Pepper, his third wife and coauthor, puts it, he told great stories and she documented and assembled them cohesively in this book. She painstakingly recording his account of every event in his life, having him repeat each story multiple times for clarity. Interviews with other characters in the story, as well as cross referencing Art's rap sheet and discography, helped her put it all in order.

You'll be swept off your feet by Art's accounts that weave in and out of the mainstream of the 20th century American story. He pauses his budding jazz career when he is drafted to wartime Europe. He establishes himself as one of the greatest saxophonists of his time, gets addicted to heroin, and circulates through the prison system. When he is jailed, the reader is his cellmate. How else will I learn what that experience is like?

The sex experiences are graphic, and Laurie says this is in part because they were once in talks to publish excerpts in a pornographic magazine. Though that didn't pan out, this element of the story affirms the honesty of the storyteller and makes the reader feel that she is reading the whole story.

Art never lives a straight life. At his worst, he was pawning his saxophones and steeling tools from construction sites to pay for a daily fix. He was clean for a period, though it happened to coincide with his participation in a cult (google "Synanon"). In his final years, methadone and Laurie were hugely stabilizing for him, but he and Laurie both used hard drugs on top of the methadone. Art died at age 56 in 1982, a ripe old age for a lifelong addict. He ravaged his body, suffering from cirrhosis and even brain damage in his later years. (Were his hernia's also related to substance abuse?)

I see parallels with another Art--Artie Lange. Lange is a brilliantly talented comedian and storyteller who has abused drugs and alcohol constantly throughout his career. When a regular on the Howard Stern show, he would fall asleep on air. Now 51, he has been in and out of jail and rehab and shows no signs of slowing down, even has his nose has collapsed as a result of his drug use. There is no way he outlives Pepper.