a more silent world

My wife and I recently attended a seminar for parents of D/HoH kids. Having been HoH my entire life and now late-Deaf, I found this seminar more like a rehash of all my worst experiences as a school-age kid. This is actually a compliment to the presenters, since they clearly understand the challenges present when D/HoH kids are mainstreamed. One thing, though. I asked what I believe to be a very important question: "when classroom/curriculum modifications are made to accommodate a functionally deaf child who uses amplification, what happens when he loses the aids, they break, whatever, for one, two, three weeks???" My question was met with very disconcerting answers. Basically, he's screwed for a few weeks and will learn nothing. This is anything but a comforting feeling. DBC, are you listening? This is what real parents are facing. Can anyone give me a better answer?

Companies spend millions of dollars creating and airing commercials. With 10% of the population being Deaf/HoH, why in the world would they not spend a tiny bit more money adding captions? Do they think that we don't shop in their stores, buy their products, etc? It's very disconcerting sometimes how we are silently ignored as a minority group.

I have to admit, I am fairly shocked to find that this is an actual news story in my area. Charles Martin, Chairman of the Bucks County Pennsylvania Board of Commissioners was apparently taken aback by the huge amount of money spent on interpreters for people who don't speak English or cannot hear in the county courtrooms. He suggested that maybe our state representative could introduce legislation that allowing the county court to test peoples' ability to speak English or hear. At a recent meeting, he asked this of the board: "If they say they're deaf, we don't drop a book next to them and see if they jump?" Seriously, ignorance at a level so extreme is sickening. Having people like this in government in simply inexcusable when 10% of our citizens are Deaf or Hard-of-Hearing.

So it has been about 18 months since I got my Rexton Cobalt 16 hearing aids, and I figured I would write a followup review in hopes that it may help people weigh the options. Overall opinion: I have very little to complain about with these. They perform admirably in almost every situation, and fail where I imagine every hearing aid will fail. My experience with Rexton customer service has been very good, and they seem very generous with parts--more on this later. The good: these hearing aids are small and basically invisible. If you're like me and don't necessarily want them to blend in, Rexton offers interchangeable colored shells. I bought silver and blue and mixed so the top of the aid is blue and the bottom is silver. I think they look cool! My batteries last about 7 days, but I need pretty high amplification, so others may get better life. I haven't tried the rechargeables that came with them yet because I know I would forget to charge them anyways. These aid

Funny, reading a post yesterday about the historical Martha's Vineyard population and ensuing mass bilingualism on the island reminded me of a quote a read a while back: "I am not impaired by my hearing loss. I am impaired by my environment." It rings so true. If everyone were bilingual, there would be no thoughts of "impairments" and "disabilities".

I have always had ITE type hearing aids up until I got my Cobalts last year around this time. A couple weeks ago I really got to enjoy perhaps the biggest benefit of BTE aids. My left aid was on the blink, so I sent it back to be repaired. Since my left ear has much higher speech discrimination, I was able to simply put my left receiver on my right aid and wear it like that for a week. Turns out the receiver was also having a problem. Within one day, I had new receivers on my doorstep courtesy of my very nice audiologist, and the difference was unbelievable--like having brand new hearing aids. For any of you wondering about going BTE, it is 100% better in my opinion. One thing I actually miss about my ITE type aids is their visibility. I find it very helpful for people to see my aids, and thus be able to make an educated guess as to why I am asking them to repeat themselves. My BTE's are nearly invisible, but I suppose some people would like that.