Showing posts with label hearing aid tips. Show all posts

...Is when I'm not in my wheelchair.

Even though during the day I rarely take conscious note of my chair, it is still something that appears as the tiniest blip on my radar even on my best days. The attention drawn to my chair by others is always there during the day when I'm going about my business. On a usual day I've grown to be able to keep that attention faded to the background; unless someone comes up to me and starts a conversation about it or why I'm in it - the stares and points (on a good day) pretty much are a non-issue and remain as standard as traffic lights that dot the scene of my day-to-day environment. The light changes color and I move along: nothing fascinates me about this interaction, and it's something that I just expect to happen.  We all know it will happen.
But like I said, even on my best days, even on days when the fact that I sit in a wheelchair is something in the background - it is still there in my mind. I can't avoid it and it's not something I have the desire to avoid either, that route just seems pointless anyway I look at it.

Still though, it can be tiring. It's tiring to wait for someone to come help me get un-stuck from a snow bank because the curb cut is not plowed. It's tiring when I sit in this one position all day. It's tiring when finally I think I have a minute to myself when a gaggle of kids on a field trip are all gawking. It's tiring when someone thinks they're being so original with their car-related comment i.e. "you'll get a speeding ticket!" "Has that passed inspection yet, where's your sticker?" "Don't drink and drive!" "Do you have a license for that?" It's tiring to hear about how Sally's grandmother has the same chair as me. All of those things are tiring to deal with which is why usually I don't. My eyes typically glaze over and I nod, and I smile but really I am doing anything but paying attention. I don't really allow myself to think about how annoying the chair is, because I know that it's not the chair's fault. But there is a part of my thinking that says there are too many irritants out there to 'deal with' one by one - and the chair is just one thing... and if only I could change that. But I can't.
The most that I have figured out to do is learning how to not let those irritants get the best of me. I relegate them to the background noise of my day, sometimes with significant effort and other times with as little as a shrug and a smile.

The best that I can explain being out of my wheelchair as being my favorite part of the day... would be to compare it to when I take out my hearing-aids at the end of the day. Some of you might be hearing-aid users and others not so I'll do my best to explain:
Hearing-aids serve to amplify the sounds in your environment. Depending on settings and personal hearing-loss they might be amplifying higher pitches or the tones that might be lower. There are hearing-aids that focus on individual voices, those that can block out the background noise of a heater or a classroom fan - but still, these noises are amplified to the wearer.
For me when I first take out my hearing-aids there is this immediate vacuum of silence that rushes into my ear canals. And it is the most relaxing noise for me, even more so than the sleep machine app on my ipad that makes waterfall sounds. That shush of every sound in my environment creates a stillness to the end of my day that I appreciate (particularly after stressful and busy days!)
What I'm experiencing when I take out my hearing-aids for those few seconds or minutes is an adjustment period. My ears have just been pummeled with amplified sounds for 9-12 hours of the day and suddenly everything seems muted, it is bliss I tell you! Then my ears will adjust and I will begin to hear my environment again at my usual hearing-loss-level decibels.

But that is what being in my wheelchair during the day is like, and then being out of my wheelchair at the end of the day. During the day my wheelchair amplifies itself to my environment, making it and my differences known to those who have the urge to take note of it however they choose. At the end of the day, when I am out of my wheelchair again, there is a certain silence to the attention it brings - it is in the absence of it. 

Do students with a hearing-loss still use F.M. systems in classes? Or is there an app for that now these days? I am only half-kidding with that remark!

For those who may not be familiar with it, this is essentially how an F.M. system works: There is a transmitter and a receiver. On the receiving end is the student who usually wears a little add-on piece that attaches to the hearing-aid. On the transmitter end is a device that can can resemble a microphone and is either clipped onto the teacher, or is placed near the area where people are talking.
Some people may be wondering, well if you have a hearing-aid isn't that enough? Ultimately what is considered to be 'enough' will depend on the student's hearing-loss. For me it wasn't enough because in a classroom setting there are chairs squeaking against tile floors, there are lights humming, radiators blasting, pencil sharpeners churning, lockers slamming, and of course -- other students making their own thousands of noises! (It's really shocking how much noise one 7 year old can make if you give her a pencil, never mind a classroom of 21 others!) A hearing-aid will pick-up on all of these sounds and it goes into the student's ear; so by the time the teacher speaks, his or her voice may be all but drowned out or muffled at best.

With the added use of an F.M. system the voice(s) that need to be most 'focused' on is then better able to be funneled directly to the student via the transmitter. But of course when you give a child any piece of technology or adaptive equipment... in the eyes of a child/student its uses can transmit much much more than just the voice of a teacher, or that group discussion. Here are a few things to NOT do from my own wonderful life experience:

1. Don't leave it in the bathroom. 
In middle school was the time when I first experienced classroom changes. For each subject we had we would have to go to a different classroom, and during that 4 or 5 min transition girls would gab in the bathroom together. I was, of course, barely responsible enough to remember my own homework so giving me the responsibility of taking the microphone from one teacher to the next was a lot. Often I would absentmindedly leave the microphone on the sink in the girls bathroom and then go off to Social Studies class, then suddenly be terribly embarrassed when I heard a toilet *swoosh, flush*

2. Don't ask your teacher about that private conversation.
A common happening with the F.M. system is that it forgets to be turned off. I can't even begin to tell you how many private conversations I accidentally was 'looped into' because my teacher forgot to turn it off, or take off the microphone. Does she really think Stephen peed his pants? Does he really think that Megan's mother is the most annoying ever? Does the lunch lady really despise watching the classroom? Was the bus driver really smoking on the playground? Avoid repeating these stories if you want to avoid awkward moments... for everyone involved.

3. Don't say "said" when the teacher says "Repeat what I said." 
Unless of course you have a teacher who has any sense of humor! I may have mentioned this before but paying-attention is not my greatest strength.. which of course doesn't really help the whole hard-of-hearing-student bit. Often teachers weren't sure if I had just not heard what they were saying, or maybe the F.M. system was malfunctioning, or maybe ...I was just spacing out again and chatting with my friends. I even had lots of crafty teachers who had caught on to my ability to lipread, so to test the F.M. system functioning they would turn away and whisper quietly into the mic so only I could hear, "Sandy if you hear this and if you're paying attention you can have a gumdrop from my desk.." Then they would turn back to the class and call on me "Sandy, repeat what I just said." And 7 times out of 10 I was probably not paying attention and would guiltily say... "...said?"