![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
A Fair Hearing
Feb. 9th, 2018 03:56 pmOver the years and decades, I've been getting an earful. Literally. That all changed on Monday of this week - I'll get to that in a minute.
In early December when I got my checkup, I mentioned to my GP that I thought I should get my hearing checked. She said she could send me to the hospital, although it might be quicker and easier just to stop in at the Helix Hearing Care centre on the ground floor of her building.
Sure enough, I was able to get an appointment for the following week. It was quite a thorough series of tests, too. There was a paper-and-pencil questionnaire, followed by in-the-booth and outside-the-booth tests in both ears, tests that involved headphones and clickers (where I pressed the button when I could hear clicks and other sounds through the earphones) and some that involved getting me to repeat things back to the audiologist. He also physically looked into my ears with his handy lights and devices.
At the end of all that, he told me that my ears appeared to be somewhat blocked, though he wouldn't have thought it would account for all of my hearing problems, and I should probably come back to have the tests repeated once my ears were clear. My next doctor's appointment wasn't for a couple of months but he suggested that in the meantime, I could try putting a couple of drops of mineral oil or olive oil into my ears for a few days and see if that helped. He also mentioned commercially available treatments that worked in a similar way.
After leaving his office, I stopped in at the pharmacy and picked up two different commercial preparations, which I tried in succession over the holidays. Two different oils, two different devices (one an eyedropper, the other an atomizer-thing whose nozzle rested in the outer ear). They may have helped a little bit but overall, the results were still disappointing. I was beginning to believe all the alarmist ads about hearing loss in the 60+ population and the slippery slope from that to social inactivity and dementia.
So when I went back to my doctor on Monday and told her the hearing-guy had said my ears were blocked, she just said "Oh, OK - I'll ask the nurse to syringe them for you before you go." And that's what happened. And as I walked out of her office towards the bus-stop...
... Talk about sensory overload! I could hear my jeans rustling as I walked, the crunch of the snow under my feet, people talking, who I was sure must be looking over my shoulder, but as I turned, realized were a good 15 to 20 feet away. Then the bus rumbled up, the Presto machine beeped loudly, the dulcet tones of Mr. Doucet calling out the stops over the loudspeaker... and why, when I walked into the house, was my partner yelling at me?
It all has me wondering whether we should all be getting annual or biennial ear-clears, sort of like mammograms and other kinds of screenings. What are the main culprits for ear blockages and are there ways I can prevent them from getting quite so blocked in the first place? I'm sure many people do need hearing aids of some sort as they get older, but when those devices can apparently run into thousands of dollars every year, surely it makes sense to look at simple and obvious solutions before milking impoverished seniors on fixed incomes to pay for fancy contraptions they may not need!
Is anybody listening?
In early December when I got my checkup, I mentioned to my GP that I thought I should get my hearing checked. She said she could send me to the hospital, although it might be quicker and easier just to stop in at the Helix Hearing Care centre on the ground floor of her building.
Sure enough, I was able to get an appointment for the following week. It was quite a thorough series of tests, too. There was a paper-and-pencil questionnaire, followed by in-the-booth and outside-the-booth tests in both ears, tests that involved headphones and clickers (where I pressed the button when I could hear clicks and other sounds through the earphones) and some that involved getting me to repeat things back to the audiologist. He also physically looked into my ears with his handy lights and devices.
At the end of all that, he told me that my ears appeared to be somewhat blocked, though he wouldn't have thought it would account for all of my hearing problems, and I should probably come back to have the tests repeated once my ears were clear. My next doctor's appointment wasn't for a couple of months but he suggested that in the meantime, I could try putting a couple of drops of mineral oil or olive oil into my ears for a few days and see if that helped. He also mentioned commercially available treatments that worked in a similar way.
After leaving his office, I stopped in at the pharmacy and picked up two different commercial preparations, which I tried in succession over the holidays. Two different oils, two different devices (one an eyedropper, the other an atomizer-thing whose nozzle rested in the outer ear). They may have helped a little bit but overall, the results were still disappointing. I was beginning to believe all the alarmist ads about hearing loss in the 60+ population and the slippery slope from that to social inactivity and dementia.
So when I went back to my doctor on Monday and told her the hearing-guy had said my ears were blocked, she just said "Oh, OK - I'll ask the nurse to syringe them for you before you go." And that's what happened. And as I walked out of her office towards the bus-stop...
... Talk about sensory overload! I could hear my jeans rustling as I walked, the crunch of the snow under my feet, people talking, who I was sure must be looking over my shoulder, but as I turned, realized were a good 15 to 20 feet away. Then the bus rumbled up, the Presto machine beeped loudly, the dulcet tones of Mr. Doucet calling out the stops over the loudspeaker... and why, when I walked into the house, was my partner yelling at me?
It all has me wondering whether we should all be getting annual or biennial ear-clears, sort of like mammograms and other kinds of screenings. What are the main culprits for ear blockages and are there ways I can prevent them from getting quite so blocked in the first place? I'm sure many people do need hearing aids of some sort as they get older, but when those devices can apparently run into thousands of dollars every year, surely it makes sense to look at simple and obvious solutions before milking impoverished seniors on fixed incomes to pay for fancy contraptions they may not need!
Is anybody listening?
