Good hearing starts with good listening

Last week, I met with an ENT doctor and then an audiologist to discuss hearing aids. (Feel free to post your jokes about hearing loss in the Comments section.) I've had hearing problems for 20-or-so years, primarily in my right ear, to the point of having surgery in the mid-90s. The surgery didn't improve my hearing; it seemed to slow the decline for a while. My hearing tests show a notch at 1kHz, just at the start of the range of the spoken voice. Conversations are important, so to stay on the right side of people, I have to stay on the right side of people.

In order to provide the power and signal processing that I need, the aid that I will need (we're planning for just one ear for now) is somewhat large, visible, and dorky. As if I should suddenly be concerned about looking dorky. This article shows that some manufacturers are trying to bring a sense of style to hearing aids.

Some of us, irrespective of our quality of hearing, are temperamentally inclined not to pay attention to what's going on around us. No hearing aid is going to fix that. Being hard of hearing isn't the problem; it's being hard of listening. A bunch of years ago, I was talking excitedly with a friend, a minister from another church, about a new insight I'd recently gained. Listening, I said, was more important than talking. I talked about this for about 10 minutes. It was only as I driving home that I realized that I hadn't asked her a single question.