Hearing Aids and Work

Thank you for sharing those examples. The cases I am familiar with include, first, an office job; in this instance, handling phone calls proved difficult. The second is mail delivery, where wearing a hearing aid was apparently bothersome. The third is an audiometrist, and the fourth is a child guidance worker—a role where there was a risk of the hearing aid breaking during interactions with children. The fifth is a land surveyor; on hot summer days, there is a risk of sweat damaging the device. While my examples focus on the difficulties encountered, working while wearing a hearing aid certainly shouldn’t be impossible. As you noted, there are likely a thousand different scenarios out there.

Data shows that in Japan, people with hearing impairments earn less income from work than people with other types of disabilities; is the situation the same in other countries?

While technology is making it easier, working in a call center would be very challenging. Also as would jobs working in a job where you work from an office cubicle as it is often a very noisy environment. Same for working in manufacturing, construction and any other very noisy workplace, as hearing aids can be overwhelmed by loud noise and hearing protection may be required. Any of these workplaces are not impossible for a person with hearing loss, but would provide very difficult challenges which not every employer is willing work hard to find accommodations.

Thank you for your comment. It seems I was worrying too much about work. Some people worry about leisure activities—for instance, not being able to enjoy a show because there are no subtitles—so how does that differ from worrying about work?

Here in the UK, the DDA (Disability Discrimination Act) states an employer must make reasonable adjustments if you have a hearing disability, a reasonable adjustment might be buying in “Environmental Equipment” like an amplified phone, or a Roger On “ALD” (Assistive Listening Device). But, over the years of Severe/ Profound loss and work, I never found any insurmountable problems, we always found a way, to make it work, with a little patience, you always find a way… Cheers Kev

This is news that makes me very happy and encouraged, yet also leaves me feeling a bit surprised and hesitant. The reason is that I find myself wondering if I could ever work with such energy.

You must have had very very busy days—how was your relationship with your family during that time?

I’m a civil servant in the UK. My work is office based. With hearing aids and a remote microphone I can deal with most situations. Large meetings are difficult though. I have mostly negotiated my way out of minute taking.

At that particular time @T.T it suited me, to be away from home, most of the time, my wife was driving me slowly insane, stage 3 Breast Cancer, that had travelled into the Lymph Nodes under her arm, 5 months of Chemotherapy, and 5 weeks of Radiotherapy, they couldn’t remove all the Cancer in the Lymph Nodes as it had attached itself to the main arteries, so they heavily targeted it, with Radiotherapy after the Chemotherapy, so I buried my head in work, asked a close friend, my pal Willie, to come up and look after Elspeth for approximately 7 or 8 months, everything I said or did was wrong, if I said nothing I wasn’t speaking to her, I couldn’t win… Of course, Elspeth was being slowly poisoned with the Chemo, so she wasn’t rational, in fact it’s probably fair to say, she was totally irrational… and scared! One thing I would say, doing approximately 84 hours a week, long term, I think this had a major effect on my overall mental health and wellbeing, as nowadays, I suffer badly from severe anxiety, which is apparently incurable…Propranolol helps, but it isn’t a cure! As with all things in life, if you work to extremes, it’s going to have cause and effect… I must admit, I was a workaholic, I loved the satisfaction gained from making it all work, I loved the pressure I was under! BTW, Elspeth has had 3 different cancers since then, including half a Lung removed, I wouldn’t say she was fighting fit, but she is extremely hardy! Cheers Kev

It sounds like you went through a very difficult time. Do you ever ask yourself what the price of those happy days was? And why is that?

In all honesty @T.T I am no scholar… But, we all have degrees in hindsight. In the UK, access to an NHS Psychiatrist is virtually impossible, probably a minimum of 2 years on a waiting list, COVID had a severe detrimental impact on these waiting lists, I believe, isolation from our fellow human beings came at a huge cost, for many folks mental health? At the Time of these events, around 2012/2013, I was aware, I would probably have some sort of price to pay via my mental health, you cannot burn the candle at both ends, physically & mentally, without having some kind of effect, it’s just a question of time… As luck would have it, 2017 Sepsis hit me, then Post Sepsis Syndrome, then Clinical Anxiety became the norm… Now most folks have no idea, what Anxiety entails, picture the most stressful event in your life, that stressor eventually abates, it may take weeks or maybe months, but it will eventually subside! With Clinical Anxiety there are no triggers, no stressors, that feeling is just there on a semipermanent basis, it never leaves you… Of course, any real stress or stressors on top, then you can multiply this by several digits! 2021 I got Sepsis again… We all adapt to whatever life throws at us, for me at least, hearing loss is just part of the problem, and I have learned to accept it, many folks don’t… I live my life, I am content, Propranolol (Beta Blockers) will normalise my heart rate on a daily basis, if I should forget them, my rested heart rate can climb to around 145 BPM, but within around 20 minutes it will drop back to normal with a Beta Blocker, they are pretty amazing… For me, it is good to share my life experiences, in the fond hope it may help others… Cheers Kev

It must be very difficult. Thank you for explaining clinical anxiety to me in detail.

Distributed work. For about the last 20 years I worked as a software engineer and then a product security engineer. Many of my coworkers were either working from home or working at another site. About half of them were in other countries (Canada, China, England, India, Poland, Singapore). Consequently, nearly all meetings were by Teams, Zoom, or other similar technology. This ends up almost eliminating the noise problem caused by meetings in large rooms or in Cubeville. I loved it. I could understand people in other countries better than I could understand someone standing in the door to my cube.