hearing loss

Mindfulness of hearing loss

Some years back when I was giving a lecture to students their questions were mumbled and indistinct. I put this down to the shyness of youth. At about the same time my family had badgered me to go down to St Michael’s for a hearing test. Their main complaints were that I always had the television on too loud and they had to say things twice to me: “you should speak more clearly then” was my stock reply. But I did go, eventually and came back shocked, the audiologist said I needed hearing aids. In denial, I didn’t wear them for six months, eventually I did for the following year’s lectures. The students spoke loud and clear this time, no shrinking violets that year.

I wear the aids more now, sometimes they are helpful, occasionally, like in the pub, they make things worse; the high pitched chatter and clinking glasses create a background so loud that it’s impossible to hear. My hearing has gotten worse of course, Audiology have turned up the gain and I’ve started thinking about strategies on how to cope with this disability. With aids in and on, one to one conversations are fine, as long as I can see the other person’s lips moving. I did an experiment once while watching the news. Turning the volume down so I could just hear the newsreader when she was to camera, the moment they cut away her voice became indistinct. So assuming the BBC don’t deliberately muffle their sound I discovered I was partially lip reading, no lessons nothing but seeing lips move boosts the clarity. So now I position myself where I can see most people and concentrate on their lips, this has the unintended, positive consequence that the speaker thinks I am unusually interested in what they are saying which of course I am – always! But it also means I get tired more quickly, so much concentration on lips, hearing and what they are saying and after fifty minutes my brain relaxes for a minute or so, I can’t stop it doing that, and during this respite I often miss something, occasionally important. I should ask for a repetition.

Last year I was elected as a Councillor in Bristol. As a candidate I was able to canvass nearly half the ward and the hundreds of one to one discussions on the doorstep worked well enough. But as a Councillor you attend many meetings, some quite big and often many with bad acoustics. And whereas when lecturing I am also effectively the Chair which means I can ask a student to repeat their question, this is often not possible at a large event or it would be hugely embarrassing to do so. “Sorry Martin what did you say? I have a bean?” “No, it was I have a dream”.

.....My colleagues are getting more used to me not following the flow after an hour or so. And as I have learned how to cope and feel secure with them I ask daft questions with less embarrassment to get myself back on track. If I don’t ask and if something important was said then I have to work it out from subsequent conversation; that risks I get it wrong, and I do. So I’ve learned that one good approach is to offer to take the minutes, this gives me an excuse to confirm what was said and correct any misunderstandings. Colleagues reading this are sure to make me minute taker now at every new opportunity as most people hate it.

But it’s not always possible to do that and an event happened the other day which prompted me to write this piece and think again about better coping strategies. We were in a fairly tense planning meeting about allowing zoo visitors to park cars on the downs on peak days. This is not permitted by act of parliament but a temporary arrangement has been in place since the 1960’s to allow parking on pre-planned days. This temporary permission was formalised in the 1990’s and is renewed every three years and the number of days has slowly reduced. So an hour and a quarter into this meeting we came to the vote. There was an amendment resolution to ask the zoo to do certain things and the actual vote. I followed the proceedings carefully and planned to vote against the resolution but for the actual permission. The zoo needed a warning shot across their bows that this practice has to stop and they need to put in alternatives but they deserve time to do this. So the proposal was made, Harriet forgot to switch on her microphone, but that’s OK we’d only recently been reminded that amendments are voted on first and then the actual permission is voted on second. So I voted against the first and for the second.

Next morning I was badgered on Twitter (I’m a fairly new user) and told in no uncertain terms, there’s not much room for subtlety in 140 characters, that I’d voted against the application itself. I also got some emails saying “well done Clive, you stuck to the principles”. I denied I’d voted that way of course, you can’t lie as I knew I’d voted against the amendment not the permission. The local newspaper must have reported it wrongly too.

Later on, wondering about that morning’s kerfuffle and embarking on a long train journey, I thought I’d better check with the horse’s mouth, the horse being the Council’s minute taker. And when he confirmed that it was I who was mistaken I was quite taken aback. How could this have happened? Well it seems it was agreed to swap the vote order, I missed all that. Fortunately the actual vote itself didn’t matter as it was my one against another six, but more importantly what about those tweets of denial I’d sent out earlier on?

So to those people I apologise and to those who wrote to me saying well done, sorry too.

And what have I learned? There would have been embarrassment for me if I’d asked the Chair to repeat the proposal during the meeting, but that would have been nothing compared with the embarrassment I face now. Writing this has helped reflect on the journey of coping with worsening hearing loss, I intend to contact a group after the general election as there must be hundreds of thousands of people suffering the same fate as I. The advice on the web covers what I already do. Maybe I should get new aids too, but it’s not that I can’t hear well with these ones, it’s the exhaustion of concentrating for so long, working to ignore the background noise and often without a minute’s break. I even deliberated about resigning but then it would mean the system has beaten yet another person of disability, so I will continue to work at this and develop better strategies. Oh and Harriet if you read this, it wasn’t your fault, it was mine, I should have asked you to repeat the proposal.

I guess this is all just part of getting old; I know someone who is losing their sight, that seems really scary; going deaf isn’t painful so I should be thankful for that. And thanks to all of you for being so understanding.

Posted 23 May 2017 - The author is Councillor Clive Stevens, Bristol City Council - Green Party

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