Who has deaf/hearing impaired family members?

[R18Civic]

I'm the hearing impaired one in my house. It causes significant problems for others and certainly myself. When I was 5 and my older brother was about 7 we both suffered nerve damage from either measles, mumps or chicken pox. Growing up we both had relatively manageable hearing loss, but as we aged the normal loss that affects all of us was far worse because we essentially started life with so much less. I started with 1 aid in my left ear at age 30 and my brother managed to wait until he was 50. Now I wear in both ears, have so for 12 years now. I'll be 62 in August.

I still deal with missing consonants, soft talkers, clipped sound in noisy environments. The upsides are few, but I can enjoy a good sleep without having to worry about a droning ceiling fan or a noisy AC in a hotel. And sometimes I turn them off when my MIL natters on, but my wife is becoming just like her....

Hearing loss is awful, the person themselves might not think that, but everyone else does. It is so hard for someone who has to repeat and repeat to not sound angry at that person when that is NOT the intended tone of the message.

This is what happened to my mother. My grandmother had german measles during my mom's pregnancy and as a result she was born without eardrums.

 

[2013ecof150]

My grandmother was a twin and born in 1915. When they were young, both got some kind of serious infection and her sister died. My grandmother recovered, but was left totally deaf.

She became incredibly good at reading lips, even at her old age when she passed away in 2005. As a kid I used to try to confuse her by speaking gibberish and made up words, but she would always know and call me out on it.

 

[Sedin26]

My wife's grandmother passed away a couple of years ago. She was still sharp but really couldn't meaningfully participate in conversations or activities the last 5 years because her hearing was so poor. She wouldn't entertain getting hearing aids because " they won't work and they'll rip me off if I get them".

My dad farmed until his mid 40's (he's in his 70's now) and a lot of the tractors and machinery in the old days operated at very high volume - it damaged his hearing quite a lot. We were always able to communicate fine but it got worse and worse over the years. He recently went to Costco and got tested and got hearing aids - they make a massive difference. He can hear everything I say and can even hear well in louder situations that have background noise. Not only that but they have bluetooth and he can do phone calls and listen to TV directly into the hearing aids...