Science Works, Part 5, AND Out To Pasture, Part 2

Speak Up, I Can't Hear You

(Photo from <https://www.henrywillis.co.uk/>)

I used to have really good hearing, now not so much.

As a middle-school teacher, I embarrassed my students on a few occasions by overhearing and responding to their whispered comments from the back of the classroom. As an avid birder, I used to be able to distinguish high-frequency ‘seet” of a Cedar Waxwing the high-pitched twitter of a Blue-Grey Gnatcatcher¹, while riding past them on my bike.

In fact, one way I knew I was starting to lose hearing was when my forever cycling buddy Mike, who is also a birder, would consistently point out birds I couldn’t hear.

In this episode, I combine two topics I’ve been writing about: retirement (which my niece hilariously dubbed “The Infinity-Day Weekend”), which starts here and ways science has improved our lives, which starts here.

It’s an incredible privilege to have the means, health, and time for an enjoyable Act III of one’s life. The means and time are luck of the draw. Most people throughout history and around the world worked for pay until they were too sick (or dead) to continue. I was born in a rich nation, lived in a town with a fine university, where I found the people and knowledge I needed to establish a career² , and was represented by a union that made sure teachers earned a livable pension.

I am in my late 60’s and (knock wood) I’ve never spent the night in a hospital. My health was partly the result of genetic luck and random split seconds where I avoided accidents, etc. But medical advances have certainly meant the difference between a healthy retirement and a very impaired old age.

For example, I had routine cataract surgeries on both eyes when I was in my 50’s. Without them, my vision would by now be so cloudy as to hamper daily living and perhaps make it impossible to read. Biking would be very hazardous for me and driving would be out of the question.

A few generations ago, cataract surgery was a very serious matter, with lengthy hospital stays and months-long recovery, followed by wearing thick glasses for life. After the cataracts were removed, the patients had to sleep on their stomachs for months. Think of all the painstaking research that went into developing the techniques that allowed me go home within an hour of my surgery and head to the bar for celebratory drinks that very evening!

One of the technologies that made my cataract surgeries possible was the invention of the laser, in 1960, which points to the importance of basic research. Eagle-eyed budget cutters of government R & D grants, please consider the following:

If the entire scientific research budget for the decade of the 1950’s had been devoted to finding cures for eye ailments, it’s doubtful any one would have done the research that led to the laser. Lasers were in some sense an answer looking for a problem when they were first developed; it was thought that they would be used in optical telecommunications (as indeed they are today) and possibly controlled nuclear fusion (a technology that is still being developed). Their incredible usefulness for optical procedures was a quickly-realized serendipitous outcome.³

But, I’m not here to talk about vision, I’m here to talk about hearing!

My father had serious hearing loss from a fairly young age. He ascribed it to his time in the army, where he received a sharpshooter’s medal. He told me that in all his hours on the firing range, he never wore any type of ear protection, and the unusual nature of his hearing loss (largely in the middle frequencies rather than the typical high frequencies) makes it likely his hearing loss was service-related.

At any rate, as my Dad’s hearing problems worsened, I realized how frustrating and isolating it can be to not hear well. Rather than constantly ask folks to speak up, my very undemanding dad often would just smile and nod, leaving him effectively out of the conversation. At any rate, my experience with him sensitized me to the possibility of my own hearing loss.

One way I realized I was starting to lose hearing acuity was when I began to feel frustrated with my family members about their newly-acquired habit of mumbling. Then one day, I was lying on the couch on my side listening to the radio. I couldn’t understand the commentator, but when I sat up, I was suddenly able to tell what he was saying. This was the first time I realized I had significant loss of hearing in one of my ears.

I got my hearing checked and soon was the proud owner of a set of hearing aids. Even with them, hearing is not my superpower any more, but they have definitely returned my hearing to normal limits. It’s very relaxing not to have to strain so hard to hear and understand conversations, similar to putting on a good pair of sunglasses in a bright glare and feeling your eyes and face relax as your visual acuity returns.

I’ve become something of a nagging activist to get friends to acknowledge their own hearing loss and get hearing aids.

People don’t want to acknowledge they are losing hearing acuity; they deny and rationalize away the admittedly ephemeral evidence that it’s happening. I think it’s because: a.) hearing loss happens to old people, and we don’t want to admit that we’re getting old, and b.) old-fashioned hearing aids were awkward and obtrusive.

It’s strange that people freely acknowledge limitations to their vision and are willing to wear glasses and contact lenses to correct them. Those technologies are much more obtrusive than today’s hearing aids, but since vision impairments happen at all ages, there isn’t the stigma of aging to complicate the matter

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As to the former clunkiness of hearing aids, I’m here to tell you, it’s not an issue anymore. The aids I wear are a far cry from Grandpa’s. In fact, when I tell folks who don’t know I wear them that I have them on, they are startled. In this photo, I am wearing them; I think you’ll have to look closely even to notice the small transparent wire.

For a week or two, I noticed them in my ears, just as one would notice glasses the first time you get them. Now, I almost never notice them. In fact, one of the biggest problems I’ve had is forgetting they are on and jumping in to a lake or shower. Early on in my hearing-aid days, I happily ran in to body-surf on a set of beautiful Lake Michigan waves. The first breaker carried away a hearing aid, and I never found it.

Good hearing aids are expensive (though getting cheaper), and they hate water.

When I first got them, it took a while to get used to the improvement in my hearing. Higher-pitched sounds came in so clearly! I remember being startled by the noise a crinkling plastic bag made, as well as the screech of the wheels on a shopping cart. The best thing was hearing the tenor strings of my guitar ringing out so sweetly and clearly.

My hearing aids are rechargeable; no more tiny, hard-to-install expensive batteries. I just set them in a cradle on my nightstand and wake up to find them fully charged for another day. They are Bluetooth-enabled; I use them to listen to music or talk on the phone.

I can program them from my phone; a super-useful setting is the one called Noisy Environment, which I use in the most challenging hearing setting, a noisy bar or restaurant with piped-in music and loud alcohol-fueled conversation at every surrounding table. This mode amplifies the vocal frequencies of those sitting close to me while dampening all other sounds coming in.

Here’s a reason to swallow your pride and get your hearing checked: If you have hearing loss, you might not realize how much of your mental bandwidth it takes to decode conversations.

As a science teacher who used to teach about sound, I’m aware that our sense of hearing is not like a radio receiver that selectively tunes in to just one frequency at a time. Think about the crowded-bar scenario. Your eardrums are resonating with many varied, undulating frequencies simultaneously all the time. Your brain is figuring out which of those frequencies is the cash register, which is the throbbing Led Zeppelin bass, which the glasses clinking on the server’s tray.

Out of all that, your brain is focusing on fragments of what it recognizes as your friend’s speech, teasing them out from the countless other voices and sounds in the room.

If you’re intelligent, you can use the limited data your brain is retrieving from your friend’s words and make a good guess as to what they just said. But it can be exhausting, similar to the work you have to do reading small print in dim light. With hearing enhancement, you’ll be able to interpret what they just said with much less effort, just as you can read more clearly with your reading glasses in adequate light.

As always, thanks for reading, and I’d love to hear your thoughts. The idea for this essay came from my daughter. Is there a topic you’d like me to write about? Let me know.

1. Birder dad joke: Q: How can you tell the Blue-Gray Gnatcatcher is the world’s most efficient bird? A: Have you ever seen a blue-gray gnat?

2. And in those times (the mid-1970’s), the U was so much more affordable than now. I paid $500 per semester tuition!

3. This is my paraphrase of a thought I read long ago. I think it was from either Carl Sagan or Richard Feynmann, but I’ve been unable to track down the quote. Anyone?