Hear ye, hear ye, hear ye

 

"Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear." Mark 4:9

One of the joys of reaching my mid-70s (in age, if not IQ) is checking out the local paper and confirming that I still haven’t made the obituaries. “I’m on the green side of the grass,” as the local yokels put it. True enough, and I’m still in fairly decent health, all things considered.

Not everything has weathered the years as well as I have. Over the past few months, and perhaps years, I’ve noticed that my television is having a harder time making itself heard and understood. Where I could watch most shows set between twelve and fifteen on the volume meter, I’ve had to crank the beast up into the low twenties lately. 

A few weeks ago I bought some electronic devices that are supposed to keep deer out of the yard by making a shrill sound (that is technically above human hearing). I set them up and watched several deer wander through the yard anyway, chewing on some of our greenery all around my ultrasonic deer-blasters. It made me wonder if they even work, but if the sound is above our listening range, how would we ever know?

Then our yard lads came by to mow and trim and asked about the deer units. I explained what they are, and Zach, the older of the two said, “Boy, they’re pretty loud. I’m surprised they don’t bother the deer.” They then got back to mowing and trimming with machines that I COULD hear.

I found myself pondering the imponderable. Is it possible my own hearing acuity isn’t what it once was? As silly an idea as that seemed, I decided to make an appointment with my family doctor and have my hearing tested. Dr. Aulakh tapped a tuning fork and placed it atop my skull, testing for bone conduction of sound. I heard the tone in my left ear, but not my right. “The good news is that I am only half a numbskull,” I exclaimed. She did not disagree with my diagnosis.

“This was just a crude test,” she said, “and it does seem you have some significant hearing loss (probably age related), so she helped me make a follow-up appointment with Dr. Hannah Carlson, one of the audiologists in the regional medical group. Dr. Carlson sat down with me to discuss activities of daily living, my hopes, concerns, and goals. She explained that hearing aids can’t restore lost hearing, but can certainly help a person hear better and understand what they’re hearing more clearly. 

After she hooked me up in the sound-proof room and ran a battery of tests (so she said, I didn’t hear everything she was apparently throwing at me), she showed me a chart that indicated that my hearing loss is between mild and moderate, and mainly in the high range of sounds. 

She suggested I was a good candidate for hearing aids and explained that as people lose their sense of hearing, they tend to isolate themselves. Early hearing aids were designed to make sounds louder (volume), but today’s aids are geared toward shifting sound to levels the wearer can hear better and with better clarity. “They can also help slow down cognitive decline,” she explained, “as the brain is stimulated by sound. As we go deaf, the brain loses the stimulation and begins to atrophy, in a sense.”

The idea that I might need hearing aids does not bother me. I have walked into homes with the television cranked up on full, and occupants unaware it was even on. Our own television has a lot of capacity left for going loud(er), but I am already bothered with the challenge of finding a balance between volume set for dialogue and volume set for commercials, and volume set for special effects, explosions, and dramatic/soaring musical scores. If hearing aids can help me save my cognitive levels and my wife’s sanity, I’m all for getting them!

After all, Jesus said, “Let those with ears to hear, hear,” (to which I reply, here here!).

They are on order, and I hope to provide you with a progress report as I continue this journey. Here’s to hearing here in this, our valley! 

Keith Axberg writes on matters concerning life and faith. Author of: Who the Blazes is Jesus? Good News for a Vulgar World (available through Amazon in Print and e-book)