Jan Schroeder with her son Bryan, who plays violin with the Albuquerque Philharmonic Orchestra.
By Jan Schroeder
When I was in college, I saw the British rock band Jethro Tull in concert in Illinois, and was enthralled and starstruck as I listened to their music blasting through massive speakers only a few feet away from me. Although the sound was a freight train roaring through my ears, the distortion and pain were not enough to budge me from my spot in front of Ian Anderson and his electric flute.
My ears rang for three days after that concert. Then at age 42 the tinnitus came back as a constant cacophony of clanking cowbells and rushing water. The audiologist diagnosed me with a severe sensorineural hearing loss in both ears. I cried for days. Sounds were muffled, but worse than that, lacked clarity, as I became accustomed to using hearing aids. I smiled and nodded to missed parts of conversations, pretending to understand when I did not.
The struggle to hear and fully function in the hearing world threw me into exhaustion and anger. Surprisingly to me, the audiologist and the ENT both could not say for sure the long-ago concert was the cause of my hearing loss.
Now at age 65, I’m on my fourth pair of hearing devices, featuring the latest technology. My audiologist and I are still experimenting to find the most accurate settings for warmth and clarity and also discovering just how intricately these devices can be adjusted to assist my hearing.
These rechargeable Oticon hearing aids include the ability to stream using wireless Bluetooth technology that can be synced to my iPhone, and it’s an incredible way to listen to my favorite music. The sound is rich and full.
Yes, I still love music, although these days it’s more classical than classic rock. My son Bryan plays violin with the Albuquerque Philharmonic Orchestra, and recently I attended one of his concerts with his older brother Eric. The performance featured a virtuoso solo violinist, and the music was beautiful, the solo outstanding.
I noticed, however, that when the soloist and the orchestra played together at roughly equal volume, I could not hear the violinist’s instrument; the sound melted away. When the orchestra played softly in the background or paused, then the sound from his 19th century violin stood out clearly. The tone was so rich that I felt it resonate through my body.
After the concert, I said to Eric, “There should have been a microphone for the soloist’s violin. Or maybe he could have used an electric violin, so we could have heard his performance better.” Eric’s expression led me to ask, “Could you hear the soloist’s violin over the orchestra?” He nodded. I was astonished at this new insight into my hearing loss.
Apparently, instead of sound being flat like an audiogram printout, it has depth—a third- dimensional quality, like a sculpture, that allows more complex sounds. Significant hearing loss seems to flatten that depth back to a single dimension, which meant that I could not distinguish the sound of one violin separately from the orchestra.
I took heart, though, as I’ve grown to trust that hearing devices are potentially only steps away from replicating that third-dimensional capability. After a journey of 23 years of hearing loss, I am grateful to hear as well as I can and for the technology for me to do so.
Jan Schroeder and her family live in New Mexico.
