In this article I will give a personal account of what living with physical loss is like. What I write will have most relevance for someone who may be becoming deaf, but hopefully others suffering from other types of loss will find some help in what I write. I could cover many areas, but I think I speak for most "disabled" people when I say that we do not want to be viewed solely in terms of what we lack. I personally do not like the term "disabled" because it draws attention to what we do not have. Nevertheless the term is the most prevalent one used. The challenge for all of us is to have a realistic attitude, and I hope we can understand and respond in more awareness without pity or condescension. With this challenge in mind, I will start with a bit of background. Then I will focus on the social aspect on what being deafened means in everyday life.
I was born with some degree of deafness, but as an adult I have noticed a change in my loss over the years. I trained and worked as a secondary English teacher, a job I loved. While working in Peru I noticed the acoustics of most classrooms were becoming more and more difficult to work in. The way that God closed the door of teaching in schools and opened the door to other areas is part of a story that is still going on.
Now I will concentrate on some of the social implications of my deafness. I have read lips out of necessity to understand speech all of my life. Actually, lip reading is a somewhat limited term; I rely on seeing the whole face and the context of what is being said. However, this practice requires tremendous mental concentration, and cannot be done well in all circumstances. Also, on the whole I can only listen well to one thing at a time. For example, if I listen to music, I can usually only focus on that. If someone tells me something during a concert I may not be able to take in what is said. The ideal environment for me to listen to another person is one - to - one with no background noise.
In social situations of groups of people, lip reading is rather like a visual tennis match. My eyes must often go quickly from one face to another. The general effect is that I have to pace myself in ways that differ from the pace of someone with the gift of normal hearing. In the majority of situations, I become tired after about a half-hour or so of lip reading and nothing else. In certain days of continual lip reading, by about seven or eight at night I am exhausted. Sometimes this general fatigue is hard. I may want to carry on, or compare myself negatively to others in envying those who have full hearing. At times I may seem anti - social, when in reality I just cannot concentrate anymore.
I will construct a day that includes typical experiences that show the effects of having to rely more and more on my eyes, not my ears, to listen. Applying these observations to a Sunday in London may give a clearer picture. I commute to church by train. Sometimes a change in my usual train is announced but I usually do not understand it. I have got on wrong trains for this reason and ended up late or in the wrong place. On London's Underground, the roar of the trains between stations means conversation is nearly impossible. My particular hearing condition includes a quality called recruitment, which also makes this noise (and that of motorways, airports and similar environments) often painful for me. If someone is with me, whether I can actually listen to that person as we walk depends upon the characteristics of each individual's voice as well as the presence of background noise. Inside a building the room also determines how well I can hear. Occasionally, for example, when I do the Sunday School, I have few problems. The room is small, carpeted (important for improving acoustics) and enclosed. I can also control the pace of the children's talking more, so each of them speaks to me one at a time.
Most Sundays, however, I must sit at the front to see the speakers' faces well enough to lip read. My church has a good loop system, which means by turning the switch on my hearing aids to a certain position, I can listen without the echo and background noise. However, when most services are from an hour to an hour and a half, by the end I am tired. If I am with a group of people in the afternoon, I usually need to have a break of sleeping or reading. By the end of the evening service, I have usually reached my listening limit, ironically when the "after church tea" or "fellowship at a flat" begins.
Sometimes I continue after my normal limit in certain circumstances. The belief that God can intervene when necessary to renew me when my own resources reach their limit underlie all I have mentioned with regard to hearing, speech and lip reading. However, most of the time He directs me through conventional, common sense means. In sharing so frankly I do not want to portray a picture only of struggle, but of listening differently to people. Each person reacts differently and hearing losses are not uniform. Others may have to learn to communicate differently too. If you know someone who is becoming deaf, then I ask you to ask God to give you patience, the ability to speak slowly and clearly, and to ask how the person wants to be treated. I hope that you are encouraged to be sensitive and respectful and to realise that hearing sound and speech should not be taken for granted.
Now I would like to focus on two other social implications, firstly, how I listen to music and secondly, public speaking. I mentioned the latter briefly last time when I shared about how I listen in my church, so most of this article will focus on the former. However, I deliberately omitted music because I wanted to explore it in more detail.
Music has been a vital part of my life for as long as I can remember. Here is where a misconception comes in: most people think that the deaf and the deafened cannot hear music. At primary school I had a teacher who thought that; thankfully not everyone agrees! The idea is grounded in some truth, in that we cannot hear as fully hearing people can. Nevertheless, we can hear, and even in this, the way each person listens to music is dependent on the type and degree of hearing loss. For certain types of deafness, music is actually excellent therapy. A relatively new field of music therapy focusing on the hearing impaired is opening up in several countries, including the UK. For example, listening to certain types of music can help people who have tinnitus (the noises inside the head).
More personally, my hearing loss is mainly high frequency, which means that certain pitches of sounds are out of my natural hearing range. With my hearing aids I can hear instruments like violins and piccolos which emit notes that are very high. However, as I have mentioned previously, the presence of other noise and the acoustics of where the music is being performed are influential in how well I can hear. I prefer to listen to music with no other sound distracting me. So if I am at home alone, I use earphones; if friends come round, ideally they do not talk if the music is on and they want me to listen. They wait until after the music is finished or turn it off. In public places, my preference is to use a loop system if available, or to sit as near to the sound's source as possible without distortion.
These are general observations about how I listen to music; there are exceptions depending on the situations. I also use my eyes in listening to music and singing. In fact, for songs I do not know I rely on sight - reading musical notes, which I learned from an early age (and am still learning!) On the whole I prefer to listen to singing without instruments. In this way I can concentrate on what is being sung without other musical distractions. If I am listening to someone has an exceptionally strong and clear voice, then I may not need to use my hearing aids or the loop system. However, most of the time, even with clear voices, I must have the lyrics (words) in front of me to understand the words being sung. Generally speaking, I can only buy cassettes that have the words included. To concerts, I take vocal scores with me if I can, (not to be pretentious!) or hope the lyrics are printed on the programmes.
If I am singing rather than listening, then I also devise strategies to make use of the hearing I do have. In church, the loop system helps me to sing the melody. If the precentor (person leading the singing) sings his/her preferred part, I try to stay on the melody (usually the soprano or tenor voice). At choir rehearsals I must position myself between or in front of two strong voices. However, I sing alto (the lower woman's part) in most choral pieces. I do this not only because my voice is lower, but also at rehearsals the lower tones are usually easier for me to hear.
The comment about tone applies to public speaking as well. On the whole, men's voices have the lower pitches that I can understand more easily. Regardless of who is speaking, I usually need to sit at the front of most public venues and hopefully make use of a loop system. Occasionally the acoustics in certain theatres are excellent, but drama usually requires more than one part that is not just a man! Many dramatic actresses have low pitched voices. Even if this were not the case, they are trained in projecting their voices in large spaces.
These comments are not just personal; they are intended as guidelines for those who know someone who is becoming deaf. Certain preventive measures can be taken to avoid some types of hearing loss. In my current job I am always warning the students that if they listen to their music too loudly they can damage their high frequency hearing. Age also can be a cause of acquired deafness. Technology has advanced tremendously in that hearing aids are improving all the time. Nevertheless learning to use a hearing aid takes time, a willingness to learn, and patience. Even the best aids in the world cannot stop the deterioration of the nerves in my type of deafness. This reality has made me more dependent upon God, although the fears do not completely go away. Fears, for example, including will I really be able to cope if I progressively hear speech and music less well? I have to keep relearning that God's love and security for me are not dependent upon the way or how well I can physically hear. Easier said than done, and a lesson I have to apply anew each day.
