Can you turn the TV up? I'm sorry, I didn't hear the phone ring. Pardon me? This restaurant is so noisy I can't hear a thing. Come again?
If you find yourself frequently using phrases like these, chances are you're suffering from hearing loss. According to the National Institutes of Health, 18 percent of American adults age 45-64 have a hearing impairment, and 47 percent of those age 75 and older are impaired. What's more, you may be hard of hearing and not even realize it.
"Often the person is not aware of it, because it comes on gradually," said audiologist Theresa Jabaley of Advanced Hearing Services in Chicago. "It's more obvious to other people. Frequently someone in the person's life helps them become aware of the issue. Often it's the wife saying to her husband, 'Get a hearing aid.'"
Although still primarily an affliction of the elderly, hearing loss is now affecting an increasingly younger crowd. (Blame our increasingly loud world -- noise is one of the leading causes of hearing loss.)
Ten years ago, the average age of Jabaley's patients was about 72-75. Today she sees many more patients in their 60s, and a fair amount of 50-year-olds, including some who believe their impairment is affecting their work.
"These people can't hear their colleagues in meetings," she said. "They have things to say, but they don't say them because they fear someone else already has said them. They fear they are losing their competitive edge."
For every person that does seek help, an untold number of hearing-impaired people remain untreated. These are people who either are unaware of their impairment, or don't want to wear a hearing aid.
"We know that so many people with hearing loss don't go in for hearing aids," Jabaley said. "The two biggest reasons why are their cost, and the social stigma. Unlike glasses, hearing aids are most often associated with grandpa. And people don't want to wear them."
But people want to hear, don't they? They want to remain socially engaged, don't they? And surely they want to hear their smoke detector, or the timer on their stove, or sirens on the road. Not only can a hearing impairment be isolating, it can be downright dangerous. Yet the NIH estimates that only one in five Americans who could benefit from a hearing aid actually wears one.
Ken Cluskey, leader of the Lincoln Park chapter of the Hearing Loss Association of American, understands why many are reluctant to get help.
"People go through a period of denial," he said. "I went through it. Your parents and grandparents go through it. You want them to get a hearing aid and they resist. Then one day they go to an audiologist and get tested. Taking that step is difficult."
Cluskey, the executive director of My Gen, an organization that provides environmental education to children, is 41 years old. He began losing his hearing at age 21, yet didn't get his first hearing aid until age 27.
"I think the best indicator of whether you need a hearing aid is how many times you ask people to repeat themselves, and how frustrated your friends and family get with you," he said.
Speaking by cell phone with the aid of technology -- a Bluetooth amplified neck loop that transmitted the call into his hearing aid -- Cluskey remarked that technology has come a long way in the past 20 years, and that it continues to change at a rapid pace.
"For the first eight years I was very self-conscious about wearing my hearing aids," he said. "But there's only so long you can battle that before you come to accept it as part of you. The sooner you get there, the sooner you make your life easier."
Today's hearing aids are smaller than ever. (Some can be placed inside the ear canal.) They also are technically superior to the ones your grandparents wore. Digital technology allows the wearer to hear in many different environments, from the family room to an echoey church to a noisy restaurant.
On the downside, hearing aids seldom are covered by insurance, and they're not cheap, ranging in price from approximately $1,000 (for a good one) to $2,000 (better) to upward of $3,000 (best). But an audiologist will work with the patient to find their most cost-effective option.
"If I'm an 80-year-old, stay-at-home woman who watches a lot of TV, and just wants to hear my grandchildren when they visit, I could do very well with something that costs half as much as the best hearing aids cost," Jabaley said.
Another reason the hearing impaired cite for not getting a hearing aid is fear that it won't work correctly, or that it will hurt. This fear is unfounded, Jabaley said. The key is to have the hearing aid properly fit.
"We program it to fit the person," Jabaley said. "You need to understand what is going on in the person's life. I see it as a health issue, not as a commercial question. We're trying to fill a gap in your life to make your life better."
