In Albuquerque on Saturday!

Must've missed it. Ah well.

BTW, the brand name is "ReSound AIR"...ask your ENT about it or check out discount retailers.

Right! I send an audiogram to planet hearing. First, they told me it was only good for high frequency loss, so it wouldn't work for me. Actually, my left ear should work with it, and the ENT (for whatever that's worth) said a hearing aid probably wouldn't help my right ear, anyway. They were talking $1,799.00 for one, and that's not much of a price when there nearest clinic is in either Rio Rancho or Albuquerque. I still think it's the one for me, and am going to check the hospital's hearing clinic on thursday, and maybe a stand alone clinic. I'll let you know.

Michael McGarrity (one of my favorite writers) was at the library last night, talking about his work, and the acustics were so bad, I just had to sit there and laugh when everyone else did. I'm going to have to follow through on this.

I'll let you know how it goes, of course. Thanks for the help, if I hadn't already said so.

Listening seriously about Roger's hearing aid adventures..

Hey, Roger...

I'm sorry, I mistakenly assumed your loss was in the higher frequencies because that describes most people. My loss is in the mid-range. The model I have is new...it's ReSound AIR Plus. It covers midtones as well as high frequency. Sorry I gave you incomplete information. As I said, it was a mistaken assumption. So, go back and ask about THIS model if you think it's a good possibility for you. You should get a 30 or 60-day trial period, in any case.

Oh, and I double-checked the cost. It was $3,400+tax for the pair through my ENT's office, so the price you quoted was about right for one, but certainly not discounted. Also, make sure all the follow-ups are included in that price. It takes several visits to fine tune them as your brain adjusts to hearing through microphones. It's a mysterious process, but worth going through.

Hope this helps.

I bet you guys are appreciative of technology.

Right, Gus, we do like these things. Is that a turkish whatchamacallit, samovar?


I'm having an interesting week, in that a fellow who helped me in the yard last year before he disappeared, a prototypical move that I am used to and don't take personally any more... showed up and asked for work, just at the right time for both of us.

He's pretty interesting, having learning disabilities as a kid and then having some brain damage from some occasion I heard about a year ago but now have forgotten - an accident, I think - and am waiting to ask...
and he has various troubles keeping a job. Lost his license from drunk driving and is well scared of driving drunk not for the reasons of losing privilege but the possibility of hitting a child. Is very obviously involved in weight lifting and nutrition. He is both sort of simple and nice and complex. He is amazed by my rattling off of latin plant names and then tells me how he knows all his rocks and where he got them... He knows what the spiders and aphids are and lots about them, more than I do, recognizes and may be ahead of me on why such and such a plant is listing that way... well, anyway, we're getting along splendidly, as long as it lasts - I know he is impulse privy; we've talked about the thing of not having money and then getting some...

Sigh. His brother, a friend of my recent business partner and I, won't have him on the jobs any more (having to do with some combo of not showing up and spending all day weeding forty square feet while being there).

but, my point, he hears me and listens, and is surprised when I go off into wales of laughter about a story he tells.
Hard to tell which of us is more wispily connected to survival, but so far so good.

Well, my point is, I can hear him. Very little of the usual What?????

Funny how you get used to the hearing disconnect.

Hey, Gus, whatever it takes, you know. How much you want for it.

No, Eva, the misunderstanding was on the part of hearingplanet. They got the audiogram, and assumed I was going for both ears, in spite of the ENT's advice to forget about the right ear. He didn't inspire loads of confidence, but he must know something. Doesn't he? Anyway, my right ear goes from below moderate loss all the way down into the severe range, and the greatest loss really is in the low freq area. The left ear, which is all I can remotely afford anyway, IS showing the loss in the high frequency range. I'm going to continue checking. A local operation has big advantages over the planet operation in Albuquerque. Two trips mean two days off work, and gas is crowding $2.60 per gal. We'll see.

I can't imagine anything anything being easier to wear than the ReSound Air.

Not odd to me, osso. Some people know how to talk, and just happen to have the right pitch. Others mumble at you through a doorway with lots of background noise, while turned away from you. They're sure you would hear their silver throated efforts - if only you would pay attention.

Right, Roger.

Me, I guess I hear a guy's voice more easily, as I have, I'm sure, totally lost all or nearly all of high pitch. I still have my audiograms of a couple of years ago now on my fridge, and they are pretty grammatically skeery. I hear some women just fine. But not the softie feminique styled, or the quiet intellectuals, or the loud and then softly murmuring sotto voce ladies.

I have trouble hearing the lady diane sometimes, which is ironic, and I wonder if some with similar fuzzed antennae have trouble hearing me.

It's a two way street, to speak clearly in front of a person and to hear. I remember my grandmother (of 81, and well she should have been) telling me I mumbled, and being aware at least for a while as a child of mumbling not being good.

But mumbling is part of our communication, the lowered sardonic voice....

I had another aunt, the dreaded aunt Marion, who studied elocution and married my mother and other aunt's brother, and was hated for at least forty more years...
I could almost see their point, though she was nice enough to me. She took lessons in haughty talk around 1920...

That lowered, sardonic voice is usually more a mutter than a mumble. I've had no trouble understanding you or Eva, by the way, so long as I could keep you on my left.

Well, then, the three of us can party...

only half kidding. I didn't have trouble hearing you, Roger.
Well, the batch of us are aware of all this. In a way, it is relaxing.

What we are fooraying into is a group of semihemidemideaffies.

And Soz is way past all this.

Soz has dealt with it young. Me, I have been busy with my own world and perhaps slighly recalcitrant ... to learn... braille... and sign language. Sign language interests me anyway. for itself. But

I may need to learn it for survival in about five minutes.
I'm busy right now, but interested.

I should add, also very resistant.





(re sign language for me personally.)

Me too, Osso. I think because it would force me to cross the line from "not-hearing-well-but-hopefully-nobody-knows-it" to "obviously-impaired." And I'm not ready to cross that line. Such a wimp, I am.

I didn't have trouble hearing any of you in Albuquerque. I heard everyone perfectly clearly except (dammit) my own husband, who often mumbles. (Sigh.) His whole family is that way.

I do appreciate Diane for choosing restaurants for us that weren't loud. I don't remember if I thanked her for that, but I certainly did think it. (Shouts "Thanks, Diane!")

Hearing loss is funny that way. For instance, I cannot hear my doorbell. That particular pitch is very bad for me. With people's voices, clarity makes all the difference. The hardest ones for me to hear are women with medium-pitched voices. I have to keep reminding my husband and son to face me when they speak, and that I cannot understand them with the TV on and the water running in the kitchen sink. But they keep doing it. I confess, I wasn't any different around hearing-impaired folk before my loss. I try to remember that when I get frustrated, but it's hard.

This brings up what I think of as my own bad behavior. When I can't hear someone, say for example my business partner, I walk over closer to her ...if she is sitting at the computer in the next room. Good exercise, but oddly subservient.

When in the presence of eva or roger or osso I tend to mumble, talk into the wind, turn my head away or soundlessly lip-snyc Jabberwocky. This seems to maintain my image of "that inscrutable dys."

are there any pictures of this get together yet?

Husker


Husker, I don't recall seeing a camera during our evening or morning gathering.

BBB

There were no cameras, no cell phones, nor computers in evidence. Maybe the camera makes the gathering. This was just a small group of friends.

That Jabberwocky was rough. I kept thinking the lip movements should start making sense at any time. Then I realized, this is Dyslexia. I altered my expectations.

Would you be kind enough to sketch a few pictures, Roger?

A simple pencil drawing would suffice.