I have a lifelong, degenerative hearing loss and while I am fortunate to still gain benefit from the use of hearing aids, I have spent sleepless nights agonizing about what happens when my world plunges into permanent silence. I am comforted by the many accommodations, technological advancements, and other things that are available to me that have made my life with hearing loss a bit easier to bear.
In this season of Thanksgiving, here is a list of my personal top 10 things that I am grateful for in the world of hearing loss:
10. Exciting New Technology In Development
From glasses that provide spoken captions in real time and translate into multiple languages to clothing being embedded with technology to allow deaf/hard of hearing users to feel the vibrations of music – the visionaries behind companies like Captify and Tactus Music are changing the world. These creations among others tamper my anxieties a bit when the fears around losing access to speech and music become too overwhelming.
Tomorrow we’ll see Brad’s Top 10 List!
9. Captions
I cannot watch TV, movies, YouTube videos, or any media without them! They are not perfect, to be sure. Live captions for sporting events still run on a serious delay and AI captions are always being refined, but in the absence of nothing I will accept and utilize a flawed something. I applaud theaters that have begun offering captioned performances for plays and musicals. I recently saw a live production of Hamilton, and even though I knew the score, I still relied on the captions to enhance my enjoyment of the show.
8. Googling Lyrics
As a kid, I would cross my fingers every time I got a new album or cassette or CD – hoping against hope that there would be liner notes that listed the lyrics to each song. As with most accommodations, it was not a guarantee or industry standard that liner notes would be available. The internet has been a godsend for me in my ability to access and read lyrics of favorite songs, musical scores, and opera librettos! No one can understand Bruce Springsteen on a good day – but I still appreciate having the lyrics to help make sense of his mumbled garbles as genius as they may be!
7. ASL Instruction Options
From apps like Mango to social media posts to YouTube videos – accessing ASL instruction has become more available than ever. It is still high on my list of “must do” activities because the time is coming where I may need to rely on it to communicate or at least to supplement spoken language. I am hoping to commit to serious study of ASL in 2026…Brad and I tried in 2024…and 2025…but 2026 is going to be our year!
6. Sparkly hearing molds
I do not understand the drive on the part of hearing aid manufacturers and hearing aid wearers to always be trying to diminish the visibility of hearing aids. You can get the silver aids and skin tone shaded hearing aid molds – but after a few “Whats?” and a few well placed smiles and head nods as you try to fake your way through a conversation, your hearing loss will be well on display. It is in that vein that I decided to jazz up my hearing aid molds some years back. I was teaching first grade at the time, and the movie “Frozen” was the pop culture moment du jour. I used Elsa as my inspiration and requested snow white molds sprinkled with glitter – I was truly going to “let it go” and stop trying to keep my hearing aids minimally visible.
5. Bluetooth Streaming
I honestly do not know how I lived my life to the fullest before my hearing aids had Bluetooth streaming capability. (Well..I do know…before ear buds became all the rage I would use traditional headphones and precariously balance them on top of my hearing aid microphones. A process that was uncomfortable, unwieldy, and miserable). The ability to stream phone calls, podcasts, music, audio books, television shows, movies, news programs…it has been life-changing. I can hear everything with such clarity and it has made activities that require close listening that much more enjoyable.
4. Roger Mic Pen
I had to use an FM System – commonly called an “Auditory Trainer” – back when I was in high school in the late 1900s. I hated that thing. It had large box receivers that had to be worn around my neck and around the neck of the speaker. The speaker also wore a clip-on microphone. It was clunky and heavy and just so…obvious. I remember one math teacher took it upon himself to disclose to the class why he had it on, without asking my permission. I can still hear his gravelly voice saying “I am wearing this because Julie can’t hear me”. I resisted assistive amplification technology in all forms for years, and in retrospect I did myself a huge disservice. I finally set my stubbornness and ego to the side and leaned into the miraculous device that is the Roger Mic Pen. This tiny, unassuming device connects to my hearing aids via Bluetooth, and amplifies voices for me. As helpful as this has been during meetings, the fact that I can hand it to a student for them to speak into has been so emotionally overwhelming that I was close to tears during that first lesson. I finally had a solution to being able to teach and move around the room and not have to guess at what my students were saying in response to posed questions.
3. My Audiologist
I have had the good fortune to only have worked with three audiologists over the last 40+ years as a hearing aid wearer. I have been lucky beyond measure to be able to share that each one of these people have been incredibly supportive, knowledgeable, compassionate, thoughtful and patient. I have never once felt unheard or misunderstood when we would work together to find the best hearing aid match or when trying to make an adjustment to a hearing aid setting. I could go on for pages and pages, but I want to publicly acknowledge and thank these three very special people: Mr. Paul Connolly; Ms. Lolly Weigel; and Ms. Mary Chevalier. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
2. My Students
I have been a Special Education teacher with Elementary aged students for 30 years. (Hard to believe, considering my stunning youthful looks, but I digress.) I have had hundreds of students pass through my classroom over the years, and while they were all individuals, each and every one of them brought a level of unmatched compassion with regards to my hearing loss. I love that they have never been shy about asking questions. I typically am on the receiving end of, “So – what are those things in your ears?” but the top spot is held by the one and only time I was ever asked, “What happens to your hearing aids when you die?”. They are the best.
1. Brad
It started with a glance and a shrug at a loud, crowded party which glided into a conversation, evolved into a partnership, transformed into founding a company, and lifted us into a crazy adventure that we have been on ever since July 4, 2024 around 11:00 p.m. The unlikely pairing of an extroverted teacher and introverted librarian seems like the start of a superhero comic strip – and I don’t know where I’d be without Brad.. There is no one else I would rather go “Down the Tubes” with in service to the deaf/hard of hearing community. We are the human embodiment of yin and yang, as opposite as two people you could ever find, and somehow it works. It works really, really well. Just watch any of our video content and you can see the magic at work. Can’t wait to see what happens next!
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