The good news of the day is: I received an email from Bergen County YJCC, and they want me for an interview this Thursday afternoon! I'm debating wearing my hearing aids or not, I'm still getting used to wearing them (out in public yet), let alone a job interview! They aren't as noticeable as I thought, but I'm still nervous about hearing/listening with them, and even though I have ADA of 1990 behind my back, I still am nervous about wearing them into a new situation dealing with possible employers.
I'm just coming to terms with accepting my hearing and HAs and finding my identity as a musician with hearing loss, but a job interview probably isn't the best place to be "still finding one's self", eh?
Any thoughts??
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Audiogram!
As some fellow bloggers have done, here's a snippet of my audiogram!
O = Right ear, X = Left ear.
I was told I had a mildly-moderate "ski-slope" loss (still from birth).
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Baseball Player wears HAs! Cool!
Sorry there aren't any captions, but I found this rather inspirational video about a baseball player who wears HAs, is happy, optimistic about playing, and that his hearing impairment is just a part of him. :)
http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=5558493
Peace all,
~Justin
http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=5558493
Peace all,
~Justin
Monday, June 28, 2010
Movie Theater Help??
I went to the movies (Toy Story 3, awesome film!), and it was my first time wanting to try out my new HA's. I went to the Customer Service desk, pointed to my HA's, and asked for a loop. A guy brought me a rather conspicuous flagpole-looking device with a plastic 'flag' attached. I've asked on other HoH Boards, and have been informed that apparently I was given a "captions reflector"...?! (No wonder it didn't work when I switched my HAs to 'T'!)
Have any of you had experience with ALD's / loops and such, in theaters? How should they work (with my HAs)? I suppose I'll have to really make sure that I get an actual "loop" next time, eh?? If they give me some kind of infrared headset, will I have to take my BTE's out to use them?
Thanks for your advice!!
Peace,
~Justin
Have any of you had experience with ALD's / loops and such, in theaters? How should they work (with my HAs)? I suppose I'll have to really make sure that I get an actual "loop" next time, eh?? If they give me some kind of infrared headset, will I have to take my BTE's out to use them?
Thanks for your advice!!
Peace,
~Justin
Sigh of Relief!
Hey everybody!
After much nervousness and such...!
Well, after my empowering therapy session this morning, I came home and "show n tell'd" my HAs to mum, first.
I had actually walked around in the kitchen for a few minutes and she had to peer at my ears to see my bte's, hehe...
I told her the NJCBVI paid for them, and that luckily my loss hadn't changed since high school.
She gave me two hugs during our conversation and told me she was proud of me...
She mentioned that a friend of hers wears them too.
She asked how the sound quality was and I said good so far.
I mentioned the support I receive from here, AAMHL, and HLAA, and that I was glad to see other musicians and therapists with them, and that I had really done a lot of thinking about it.
Told her about the Music-Links that would work with my ipod too, so I can still enjoy my music, and she thought that was cool.
Both Nate and dad have walked around me and haven't seemed to even notice yet, hehe! :P
So... I feel a big sigh of relief coming over me! Thank you all for being here and supporting me, and here's my happy "end" to my big nerve-wracking debute hahaha!
Peace always,
~Justin
After much nervousness and such...!
Well, after my empowering therapy session this morning, I came home and "show n tell'd" my HAs to mum, first.
I had actually walked around in the kitchen for a few minutes and she had to peer at my ears to see my bte's, hehe...
I told her the NJCBVI paid for them, and that luckily my loss hadn't changed since high school.
She gave me two hugs during our conversation and told me she was proud of me...
She mentioned that a friend of hers wears them too.
She asked how the sound quality was and I said good so far.
I mentioned the support I receive from here, AAMHL, and HLAA, and that I was glad to see other musicians and therapists with them, and that I had really done a lot of thinking about it.
Told her about the Music-Links that would work with my ipod too, so I can still enjoy my music, and she thought that was cool.
Both Nate and dad have walked around me and haven't seemed to even notice yet, hehe! :P
So... I feel a big sigh of relief coming over me! Thank you all for being here and supporting me, and here's my happy "end" to my big nerve-wracking debute hahaha!
Peace always,
~Justin
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Auditory Halos & Depth Perception
I have a couple questions based off of observations I've been noticing with my HA's...
I'd best describe them as "auditory halos" or "after-ringing/noise" that immediately follows the amplified sound into my HA's when I'm hearing things. This doesn't occur when I'm not wearing them.
Any thought on what it is? Just residual amplified noise bouncing around inside my ear? Do "normal" hearing people experience this too??
I've also found that my "auditory depth perception" when wearing my HA's is much different than my "norm". When wearing my HA's, sometimes it feels like a person talking next to me or even a couple feet away, (even if I'm not looking at them, or even if I am) is almost "inside my brain"...?! Mainly, people sound louder and closer than they actually are, which can be disorienting at times. What are some effective tools I can use to offset this "distance distortion"?? I've played around with my volumes, but it usually just leads to me just letting things be, and accepting that this is my new way of hearing, and that maybe things were also louder like this, but I just couldn't hear it??
Peace all!
~Justin
I'd best describe them as "auditory halos" or "after-ringing/noise" that immediately follows the amplified sound into my HA's when I'm hearing things. This doesn't occur when I'm not wearing them.
Any thought on what it is? Just residual amplified noise bouncing around inside my ear? Do "normal" hearing people experience this too??
I've also found that my "auditory depth perception" when wearing my HA's is much different than my "norm". When wearing my HA's, sometimes it feels like a person talking next to me or even a couple feet away, (even if I'm not looking at them, or even if I am) is almost "inside my brain"...?! Mainly, people sound louder and closer than they actually are, which can be disorienting at times. What are some effective tools I can use to offset this "distance distortion"?? I've played around with my volumes, but it usually just leads to me just letting things be, and accepting that this is my new way of hearing, and that maybe things were also louder like this, but I just couldn't hear it??
Peace all!
~Justin
Restaurant Night
ey everybody,
Just wanted to drop in and share a new experience!
So I was out to dinner with my girlfriend last night, and we went to a pretty packed Burger place. (Luckily, they have awesome veggieburgers, so I can have my vegan fix hahaha--but grossly enough, they put friggin bacon, which was NOT on the menu for that burger, on my burger, which I had to yoink right off after a bite, to find it hidden under the bun?!)... Sorry for the digression... onward...!
W(ell, except for the couple hours Amanda asked to wear them to her class in the afternoon, haha, so she could 'see how I heard',---and she found that if she tugged the earmolds out a tiny bit, to reduce the 'suction', then things were balanced, albeit even on '1', they were loud for her--to me, I have to put them between 2-3, and squish them in a bit She described some things to me while she had them in, that I kinda heard with them in a different way, and I told
her that what she was hearing on '1', was maybe something similar to the sounds I hear with them up louder---I had been wearing my HA's just about all day, and didn't want to take them out as I often did in the beginning. I decided to be brave and wear them into the restaurant. Of course, I was bombarded with tons of crowd noise and such. I normally sit across from Amanda, but I chose to sit right next to her instead, so I could not only snuggle a tad, haha, but also hear her better. (Surprisingly, she was on my left, "worse" side, but I could still hear her and understand her almost as easily as if she had been on my right!) I persevered through the racket and worked on tuning out the extraneous noise, although she had to repeat the waiter's questions to me a few times because I could hear him. A couple screeching kids made me cringe at times, and there was that awful "oven beeper" noise, I think it was, that kept going off, and I kept wondering if my "ears" were whistling, but I decided they weren't, it was just the noise. I'm sure you are all familiar with that "ambiance" that assaults our microphones, plunging into our eardrums, hahaha. As noisy as it was, I felt like I was making headway forward in trying out my HA's and learning to listen again, and overall, it was OK. :)
On the ride home, we had the windows open, and the radio up, but the wind caused the music to be quite intermittent, at least to me, and I was surprised to find that I had turned my HA's all the way up to try and hear the music, even with all the wind (sometimes I think I'm a volume junkie hahaha)!!! It was a sea of wind noise, and then I'd hear Amanda's voice quite loudly in my ear when she'd talk to me. I wouldn't realise how loud everything was until we'd slow down to pay a toll, or roll the windows up, that everything was quite lud, and I had to roll down the volume nubs hahaha!
And, as we entered my town, I popped my HA's out, them squealing in protest as I tugged out the molds, to give my ears a rest for the day, and really noticed just how much quieter my world really has been for a long time... An odd introspection, to be sure...
But it was nice to get out to dinner, as we hadn't in awhile, and I felt better about 'being brave' and working through the racket... :) I'm finding that even if some places are difficult, I still am happy to find myself hearing better, even if in the slightest, you know? As tiring as trying to tune out noise can be, it's less tiring than straining to hear in the first place! XD
Does anyone have any tips that have worked for them, in dealing with listening through HA noise, and in noisy places?? Would wait-staff be perplexed if I didn't even talk, just wrote everything down (but then that leads my troubled eyes to have to stick the pad to my nose to see!)??
Peace everybody!
~Justin
Just wanted to drop in and share a new experience!
So I was out to dinner with my girlfriend last night, and we went to a pretty packed Burger place. (Luckily, they have awesome veggieburgers, so I can have my vegan fix hahaha--but grossly enough, they put friggin bacon, which was NOT on the menu for that burger, on my burger, which I had to yoink right off after a bite, to find it hidden under the bun?!)... Sorry for the digression... onward...!
W(ell, except for the couple hours Amanda asked to wear them to her class in the afternoon, haha, so she could 'see how I heard',---and she found that if she tugged the earmolds out a tiny bit, to reduce the 'suction', then things were balanced, albeit even on '1', they were loud for her--to me, I have to put them between 2-3, and squish them in a bit She described some things to me while she had them in, that I kinda heard with them in a different way, and I told
her that what she was hearing on '1', was maybe something similar to the sounds I hear with them up louder---I had been wearing my HA's just about all day, and didn't want to take them out as I often did in the beginning. I decided to be brave and wear them into the restaurant. Of course, I was bombarded with tons of crowd noise and such. I normally sit across from Amanda, but I chose to sit right next to her instead, so I could not only snuggle a tad, haha, but also hear her better. (Surprisingly, she was on my left, "worse" side, but I could still hear her and understand her almost as easily as if she had been on my right!) I persevered through the racket and worked on tuning out the extraneous noise, although she had to repeat the waiter's questions to me a few times because I could hear him. A couple screeching kids made me cringe at times, and there was that awful "oven beeper" noise, I think it was, that kept going off, and I kept wondering if my "ears" were whistling, but I decided they weren't, it was just the noise. I'm sure you are all familiar with that "ambiance" that assaults our microphones, plunging into our eardrums, hahaha. As noisy as it was, I felt like I was making headway forward in trying out my HA's and learning to listen again, and overall, it was OK. :)
On the ride home, we had the windows open, and the radio up, but the wind caused the music to be quite intermittent, at least to me, and I was surprised to find that I had turned my HA's all the way up to try and hear the music, even with all the wind (sometimes I think I'm a volume junkie hahaha)!!! It was a sea of wind noise, and then I'd hear Amanda's voice quite loudly in my ear when she'd talk to me. I wouldn't realise how loud everything was until we'd slow down to pay a toll, or roll the windows up, that everything was quite lud, and I had to roll down the volume nubs hahaha!
And, as we entered my town, I popped my HA's out, them squealing in protest as I tugged out the molds, to give my ears a rest for the day, and really noticed just how much quieter my world really has been for a long time... An odd introspection, to be sure...
But it was nice to get out to dinner, as we hadn't in awhile, and I felt better about 'being brave' and working through the racket... :) I'm finding that even if some places are difficult, I still am happy to find myself hearing better, even if in the slightest, you know? As tiring as trying to tune out noise can be, it's less tiring than straining to hear in the first place! XD
Does anyone have any tips that have worked for them, in dealing with listening through HA noise, and in noisy places?? Would wait-staff be perplexed if I didn't even talk, just wrote everything down (but then that leads my troubled eyes to have to stick the pad to my nose to see!)??
Peace everybody!
~Justin
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