Airport Audiologist

I was recently travelling back from an Audiology convention and was standing in a security checkpoint line at the Orlando airport. I actually love airports, I love seeing all the people and often try to imagine what their "story" is. I tend to be very visual anyway and notice much about my surroundings. This was the end of the U.S. Spring break and a Sunday and as such the airport was busy and bustling. As security lines go mine was moving nicely when next to me I noticed and older couple travelling and yes I couldn't help but notice his ears and his hearing aids. Right away I could tell what manufacturer they were and rather obviously I could see that his earmolds (the pieces in the ear) were not in correctly. Within moments I surmised that these were new earmolds as they looked new with new tubing.  I turned to my travel partner and pointed out this inefficiency. In my office I would have no problem walking up to my patient and helping them fix the hearing aid insertion. I felt compelled to just reach over and fix it but that of course would be weird and I would have probably ended up swarmed my the many security officers at that checkpoint. As much as knew what I wanted to do I resisted the urge to do so. As we passed through security my friend asked if I was going to go over and say something to this man as the hearing aids looked like they were going to fall out of his ears. As outgoing as I can be in my own office I am sometimes more inclined to blend into the woodwork in public places. I just didn't feel comfortable helping this man hear better in this context. We had some time to wait for our flight and being a large and busy airport filled with thousands of people at any given time I had many stories to put together about those that I saw travelling.

As I was boarding the plane I looked at my boarding pass to check my seat number and there in what I suspected was my row was the very same man with the ill fitting hearing aids. I felt a little like Jonah to use a Bible analogy being called and compelled to do my  work as an Audiologist.  I leaned over to this gentleman and asked him if I could help him with his hearing aids and explained that I was actually an Audiologist (luckily he know what that was) . In a couple of seconds this man was hearing again and we proceeded to have a nice conversations through our trip. I gave this an a little advice along the way regarding his hearing aids and am certain that his Audiologist will take good care of him now that he has returned home.

While at the Orlando airport I saw a Disney store that had the sign EarPort and the Disney logo meaning this was a place to get mouse ears. I couldn't help but think that in more ways than one Orlando really was an EarPort that day.

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Resolutions and Doughnuts

Making  New Years resolutions are a part of the change in the year for many. It is often the case that people make resolutions for self improvement, losing weight seems to be the most common resolution,  or maybe it is to eat healthier or excercise more. It struck me today as I was sitting down to write this article that much of what we resolve has do has to do with self. I suppose that when it comes to making resolutions the one thing that we should have some control over is ourself. Well what about other types of resolutions that may be moving away from self just a little? What about resolving to spend more time being a better listener?  This particular resolution may be one that revolves around our relationships and how we function within them.

Too many times we live life becomming self absorbed, self obsessed and fail to make the connections in life that are right in front of us. Often I hear my children talking away to me but sometimes fail to really listen to them. Yes my youngest two tend to talk incessantly and I tend to tune them out at times but maybe I should resolve to actually try to listen more often, maybe I should resolve to communicate better on a one on one basis, invite that friend out to coffee to just talk, spend time with just one of my parents at a time to listen to them and hear them. What is more important in life than the relationships we have?

If relationships are so important then why do we take them for granted and focus on things further down the scale of importance like weight loss when it comes to New Years resolutions. As an Audiologist I get to think about communication and how to improve it on a daily basis so perhaps this is a topic that is at the forefront of my conciousness for that reason. At Christmas time I wrote an article about taking the time to consider how best to communicate with that hearing impaired loved one during the holidays, perhaps this is also a valid consideration in every day. Life is so fast paced and hurried that we forget to slow it down from time to time and have that slow fulfilling conversation with that friend, co-worker, family member or aquaintance, to truly listen allowing that person to feel listened to and heard.

It takes some degree of skill and awareness to be able to have a converation with someone and verify that your message is getting across while also affirming that their message has been understood and feeling good about it. We talk about relationships and communication but these just become buzz words when we fail to intentionally make them an important part of our every day life. So maybe we can make these types of resolutions and lose weight by just skipping the doughnut at the coffee shop while having that conversation.

Hear for the Holidays

Communication check list especially during the holidays.

1.) Reduce the background noise.
2.) Be at a good listening distance from each other 1 meter to 1.5 meters apart.
3.) Speaking slower is a better approach in communication that speaking louder.
4.) Maintain eye contact. This means that you are facing each other and that your voice is going towards the person that you are talking to, it also allows for some speech reading to take place as well as helping to           interpret body language.
5.) Confirm that the person you are speaking to understood what you said.

The holidays are such a wonderful time of year a time where we spend time with one another enjoying the company of family and friends. It seems like every weekend and sometimes weeknights are filled with get -togethers and parties and yes lots of eating. Even if the Holidays are not quite this busy for all it is a time when we tend to be in and around groups of people socializing. For some this time of year can be difficult and stressful. The group that I speak of are those that suffer from hearing impairments.

The hearing impaired are often torn between their wish to be in and around family and friends and their wish to be nowhere near these difficult listening situations. The Christmas and holiday season is often unavoidable and therefore a time of great difficulty for the hearing impaired. How much fun is it to sit down to a large family dinner and not be able to follow the conversation entirely? How frustrating is it to go to a school Christmas program and find the gym too reverberant to hear the presentation ? How out of control does one feel at that office party where everyone seems to be following and getting the joke when all you can do is smile along to cover up your inability.Those with hearing impairments typically struggle to hear clearly in a background of noise, things might be loud enough but perhaps not clear enough to understand. I know many of my patients that avoid these difficult situations sometimes consciously and other times unconsciously.

 It is discouraging not to feel a part of something. So how do those with the impairment deal with this difficulty. As an Audiologist I would obviously say that you should visit an Audiologist and seek help and advice. For those that have an appropriate hearing loss the use of amplification can be a phenomenal beginning to claiming back this part of your life however there is more to functioning well than that. Using your eyes to hear is a common strategy, watching the persons face that you are communicating with allows one to pick up visual cues. We do a lot of reading intent and intention by visualizing peoples body language. When someone is smiling as they talk they are probably saying something worth smiling about and so on. Our brains also do make a connection sorting out what we hear by correlating it with what we hear. Locating yourself close to and in front of the person you are communicating with also makes a significant difference in picking up clearly the conversation. Another variable that can help is to reduce the background noise whenever possible. If you are trying to have a conversation with the television on you will probably struggle even with normal hearing at times. The reduction in the background noise is a significant factor in speech intelligibility especially when combining that with the other strategies. These are strategies for the hearing impaired but perhaps even more significantly it is important that the friends and family members of those that have the impairment should think outside of themselves and consider just how difficult and frustrating it is for the hearing impaired individual to function in these complex listening environments.

 It is too easy to forget that unseen impairment. If our family member were physically impaired we would often be more considerate and accommodating their needs than those with a hearing impairment. How often I hear my patients tell me of their family that just do not understand how difficult this time of year is for them. While Christmas and the holidays should be a joyous time of celebration  for some it is a time of great struggle. As we consider what nice thing we do for our family during this time of gift giving perhaps giving the gift of better hearing is something to consider.

Take the time to spend some one on one time with that family member in a quiet environment having that conversation that they would otherwise miss in a group, make them feel a apart of the conversation by placing them at a preferential listening spot around the Christmas tree of dinner table, talk to them not around them. More than the gifts we receive at this time of year we most cherish the relationships we have and the time spent together laughing and sharing, communicating.

Ho Ho Backhoe !

As the Holiday season is upon us many a wife and husband start to become perplexed as they try to find the perfect gift. Many of my male friends and I have actually come to the same conclusion about what we would consider the perfect gift. Even moments ago I just had a conversation regarding this perfect gift.  The unfortunate part is that men and women tend to see the world differently and what a man might consider just perfect a woman may consider impractical, what a man might consider most practical and useful a woman may consider ridiculous. While this perfect gift exists it is the rare man that has ever had his wife get him one for Christmas or his birthday or another important special occasion. Yes men I do speak of the Backhoe. I have mentioned to my wife on more than one occasion that I need a backhoe.  The first question my wife asks is usually why? Well I may not be sure exactly what I might need it for but I feel the need for a backhoe. I am certain that many an outdoor job around my property would be made much easier with a backhoe. I could dig ponds, dig a hole for roasting Meat, move those piles of snow. I really could come up with a lot of things I could do. I am convinced that it would be the best gift ever. As a reader you have probably already guessed that I have not yet received this perfect gift. I do suppose that there are lots of gifts that we men feel we need that our significant others just shake their heads at. I think that specialty tools fall into that category.

Men and women are different for sure in so many ways. In the clinical setting I am often reminded of how the genders differ. I watch as my older patients are not able to drive and have their licence taken away, men seem to take this much harder than women as they consider this a part of their manhood or independence, while women tend to take these things in stride. For a man to accept that he has a loss of hearing can sometimes be difficult. This difficulty might be one that women face as well but men sometimes seem to struggle more with even wanting to know what their hearing really is. Men want to be able to fix things and seem to have a hard time dealing with the things that they can't fix themselves. I have recently seen this happen with one of my patients, a young father who had his child diagnosed with a hearing loss. While this family was very practical in accepting the loss and was extremely proactive in getting amplification on this infant, Dad was still trying to find a fix for it. In this case he was hopeful that an alternate medical approach would work although this was an impossibility. In the end the Father came to terms with the realities they were facing and took the challenge head on.

Yes we men want to fix things, dig holes, be the masters of our own destiny but sometimes it is better to accept the practicalities of life and face them head on. Maybe I do not really need a Backhoe after all.

Better Hearing = Better Living

At times the first step can be the biggest one.  In talking to patients I have come to realize that the journey to the front door of my clinic can be the longest, most difficult one.  It would appear to those who suspect they have a hearing loss coming in for a simple hearing test does not just represent knowledge. It potentially represents a prejudged string of events that many find daunting.  A hearing test can take away one’s ability to continue to deny that they have a hearing problem.

I just had a conversation with one of my patients that had felt this way.  This woman was having trouble hearing in her workplace and finally made an appointment to see me.  She didn’t want to use a hearing aid; she didn’t want to be hearing impaired but her reality was that she did have a hearing loss and she did need hearing aids.  Today, weeks after being first fit with hearing aids, she sat in my office telling me how much her hearing aids were helping her to live her life to its fullest.  This woman puts her hearing aids on in the morning and forgets about them.  She simply hears…in the workplace, in the boardroom and socially.  As this woman describes it “life is now better.” 

The first step to better hearing may be hardest but perhaps it will lead to a life lived to its fullest.

A Picture is Worth A Thousand Words

In 1993 when I started my clinic I was young and single with so much in life that would change in the next 20 years. The snap shot that one would take of my personal life would be very different than it would be currently. From the very beginning of my life as an Audiologist I was always very comfortable sharing a view into my personal life as my patients and I got to know each other, so it was not out of character for the proud new father to have his office plastered with pictures of his newborn son in1995. Even in the beginning the effect on my patients was a significant one. As was often the case the initial conversation I would have with my patients would center around those pictures.  In the next ten years we had five more children, all of them boys, yes that is six boys in ten years. My office wall had a great deal of pediatric content with all the pictures of my children that I wished my day to be surrounded with. I had these pictures on the wall for myself so that in the moments I had to myself I could sit back in my chair and take in my family. I could look at a picture and smile as I considered what that look on that child’s face represented. Many of the pictures that were (and are) on my wall have been candid shots of the boys in play, just living life. There are pictures of my two year old on the beach his face plastered in sand stuck to the left over virgin Pinna Colada that he had spilled on his face, or the picture of my three year old at the ski slope happily skiing with his brothers, or my boys held in my embrace, or another boy with a lump of snow on his stuck out tongue with a big smile on his face, or what I think is my patients favourite the picture of one of my boys dangling a big juicy worm over his mouth as his brothers had dared him to eat it after seeing the movie “How to Eat Fried Worms”, and yes I think he ate it. I have come to understand over the years what a profound effect those pictures have had on all that have seen them. The grandparent that walks in my office can’t help but relate to their grandchildren, the parent to their own children and their experiences and so on.  There is an interesting phenomenon that I have observed that has really made me think relating to this topic. When I have toddlers and even babies in office it is amazing to me to see how they tend to gravitate to the things in the office that they relate to such as the pictures of children on the wall, or my not so obviously placed treasure chest or a random toy in the office. . Children seem to notice these things long before adults. I can’t tell you how many children I have had conversations with regarding “the boy eating the worm” as a way of making the child comfortable with this clinical environment. The point is that we all want to have something in common with each other, we wish to relate to and personalize the health professionals we come in contact with, there is a need to humanize the interactions that we have in a potentially uncomfortable professional environment. This understanding has been one that has become apparent to me over the years and as a result we now have in our clinic intentional processes and directives to enable our staff to engage our patients from the moment they reach out to us. When we hire, we hire staff that enjoy getting to know other people, that have a very real and authentic approach to the relationships they build. It is human nature to work harder for those that we connect with and know, which is why I love the fact that my staff take great joy in getting to know each and every patient that they come in contact with.