By Timothy Higdon

I started learning piano in the 3rd grade, at church with the organist. I kept it up through high school, taking lessons at Butler University in Indianapolis, and while at college at Indiana University, I took music courses at the university’s school of music.

During college, I ended up changing course and joining the military, where I served as a combat engineer officer with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for 17 years, including in Germany and South Korea. I did a lot of demolition work, military exercises using an armored vehicle, which was pretty much just a diesel engine with four wheels attached. When I left the service, I started my career in sales and marketing at Biomet and IBM, and then switched to the nonprofit world.

It was about five years ago, living in New York City, that I came back to piano, taking lessons in jazz piano at Columbia University. Up until then it had all been classical, but I loved listening to jazz and wanted to learn how to improvise on the piano. Classical music is all about reproducing as closely as possible the score as it’s written by the composer, while in jazz you take what is called the lead sheet as a mere suggestion and are encouraged to riff and improvise freely.

Jazz piano is like completely learning a new language—how to play all the chords, and studying music theory and jazz music theory to understand how tunes are structured. My goal was to not only learn how to improvise but also to be able to play in an ensemble. I try to practice 12 to 14 hours a week. Last winter I was thrilled to perform at Columbia, and we would have again this spring but then the COVID-19 pandemic reached the U.S. A few years ago I was also fortunate to be able to participate in “jazz camp” for two different years—a real thing for adults, a magical week in Rhode Island that was another amazing experience.

When I was discharged from the military, part of the standard physical is a hearing test, and it showed I had a mild, mid-range hearing loss. Over the past two to three years, I have noticed an intermittent tinnitus, and that living in New York City and socializing with friends and colleagues in restaurants or going to the theater or movies has become increasingly difficult. I noticed I was more sensitive to loud places, and the spaces themselves were becoming louder, too.

My career to a large extent has been as a professional talker, and I love the conversations and interactions I have with a diverse range of interesting people. But I could tell it was increasingly difficult for me to hear in social settings. I’d cup my hand by my ear and ask again what was said, but then eventually I stopped asking people to repeat, instead just nodding my head and missing important parts of the conversation. At times, I would stop trying. It was just getting too hard.

Then one day practicing piano I thought that the upper register was not functioning, or that something else was wrong with my upright. I even had the piano tuner come look at the piano to ask him about the high C not being audible. He didn’t know what I was talking about.

Finally, and especially as the CEO of Hearing Health Foundation (HHF), I knew I had to get my hearing tested. And frankly when the results came in, even with all these telltale signs, I was very surprised at how much my hearing loss had worsened.

I was immediately fitted with a pair of ReSound hearing aids, and my audiologist Shelley Borgia, Au.D., CCC-A, at NYC Hearing, was careful to only give me so much sound at a time. She had me visit three times over two and a half months in order to reacclimate me to all the sounds of everyday life without giving me sensory overload.

It was like Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz” going from black and white to full color. With the piano I can hear all kinds of new levels, and the first time at a restaurant when I was able to hear the person I was dining with—in a loud setting—was wonderful. I’ve been very pleasantly surprised that I can so easily adjust the programming on my hearing aids using a smartphone.

Hearing aids these days are so comfortable and invisible that I sometimes forget to remove them before a shower or bath, and they occasionally end up down my shirt if I fall asleep with them on (which puts me in a real panic!). I am also still trying to figure out the best way to wear a face mask with them on.

If hearing aids are not working for you, it’s possible you are working with outdated technology. But more than that it’s so important to find an audiologist you work well with and who understands your needs and goals—those of your wallet as well as your hearing environments and lifestyle.

If you have a hearing loss, why suffer? The price you pay for not fully hearing well is far, far more than the perceived vanity lost from wearing hearing devices. This type of health benefit should be no more of a stigma than self improvement through wearing braces or glasses, and equally as commonplace.

It’s made such a difference to be able to fully function professionally and socially that—as HHF has long promoted—I am proud to be a hearing ambassador, evangelizing to both my personal and professional contacts: Get your hearing tested regularly, and if needed, treated. I promise you’ll have no regrets.

Timothy Higdon is President & CEO of Hearing Health Foundation. This article was originally published in the Summer 2020 issue of Hearing Health magazine.