It’s Bell Let’s Talk Day!

It’s okay to not be okay! If you or someone you know needs help, reach out! #BellLetsTalk  #endthestigma

It was first discovered I had significant hearing loss after my Leadership course in 1990 (Now called DLP training). During my course, we were doing night time maneuvers and I was sentry guard. My job was to stand guard and prevent the passage of unauthorized persons. Anyone coming through had to provide the ‘password’. I quickly learned that I could NOT lip read in the dark and it caused some frustration for me and confusion to my colleagues around me. The next morning as we were marching back to camp, I was unfortunately the subject of many unfavorable comments because of the incident the night before.

Not my actually audio-gram.

Once I got home from my course I made an appointment with the ENT (Ear, Nose and Throat) clinic at NDMC. After thorough testing it was discovered that I had conductive hearing loss, my audio-gram showed a cookie bite pattern and I was fitted with ITC hearing aids.

A couple of weeks later my hearing aids were ready.  I picked them up and they tweaked the programming and I was to come back in a few weeks for some adjustments, if needed. As I drove home (in the rain) I was confused with a weird sound that my car was making…you see, I had never hear the back wiper on my car. Initially, I could only wear my new hearing aids for several hours at a time because my brain was not used to ‘hearing’ all these life sounds; which caused some terrible headaches. I was  initially quite depressed when I was diagnosed and embarrassed to wear my hearing aids; I even changed my hair style so people would not see them.

Fast forward 28 years; I now wear BTE hearing aids as my hearing has progressively gotten worse (severe hearing loss now).  All to say that it is definitely tough when you first get diagnosed…but it is important to follow through with treatment and seek support.  I know I NEED them to function every single day.

This is a great post on depression and hearing loss: http://www.audiologypractices.org/depression-happens