One Woman's Grand Passion for Music

By Yishane Lee

Nancy M. Williams joined the HHF board in March of 2012 and has been an active member since. She coped with the loss as a child, accepted it as an adult, and now has become an advocate for hearing research—all experiences she writes about in the Winter issue of Hearing Health magazine.

Williams has had an interesting career, going from two decades of marketing and management consulting (after earning degrees from Stanford and Harvard Business School), to growing an online music community through her online magazine Grand Piano Passion. She won the 2009 Lamar York Nonfiction Prize for a heart-wrenching essay she wrote about returning to piano playing after a 25-year hiatus, and which has spurred her writing as well as playing.

In her article for Hearing Health, titled “A Grand Passion,” Williams writes:

In kindergarten, after I sang “Three Blind Mice” too loudly on the big rag rug in our classroom, I was diagnosed with a high-frequency hearing loss. My parents, worried about the social stigma, refused the recommended hearing aid, a decision that boomeranged when I reached middle school. “You can’t hear secrets,” complained a girl with green eyeliner at lunchtime. “Don’t sit with us anymore.”  

I was devastated. My parents broke down and had me fitted with an aid, a behind-the-ear model, bulky by today’s standards.

My parents had acted with the best of intentions in a society that tolerated hearing loss even less than ours does today. Yet the incident in the lunchroom stayed with me for a long time. To compensate, I rarely admitted to anyone that I had a hearing loss.

Playing the piano again, and writing about it, and joining HHF led Williams to finally be fully open about her hearing loss. To do it required overcoming decades of shame, which she writes about openly both in our piece and in her magazine.

Williams has also been very involved with helping other musicians with hearing loss. She’s a huge asset to our organization, offering strategic advice and tips both as a businessperson and a consumer who uses hearing aids. We hope that you enjoy her story in the Winter issue, part of a special package about music, musicians, and hearing loss and tinnitus.

Cue the Music

By Yishane Lee

Along with wrapping up holiday gifts, we are also busy wrapping up the Winter 2014 issue of Hearing Health, available in January.

Our cover story is about legendary guitar great Les Paul, and the launch of the Les Paul Ambassadors. The Les Paul Ambassadors are an exciting partnership between HHF and the Les Paul Foundation to support our search for a cure for hearing loss and tinnitus as well as educate consumers about this topic. We’re thrilled that Lou Pallo, a longtime friend of Les Paul and a talented musician in his own right, is our first Ambassador helping to spread the word.

Les Paul, who had a hearing loss and tinnitus, is the inspiration for our special music issue. Enjoying music can be a challenge for people who have a hearing loss, partly because hearing aids favor the voice of one speaker above background noise, and what is music if not many speakers and a lot of so-called noise?

As staff writer and audiologist Barbara Jenkins more eloquently explains:

“Hearing aids have been developed to maximize clarity of speech understanding, but to do this they must reduce non-speech sounds—which are the very elements that enhance musical or environmental sounds. Even though you may hear music better with your hearing aids than without them, most speech enhancement programs by necessity end up distorting music.”

Jenkins has plenty of helpful tips for optimizing your hearing aids to enjoy listening to music, and beyond merely engaging the music program in your hearing aid. Look for “The Sounds of Music” in our Winter issue.

You have probably heard of the cochlear implant (CI), but what about the hybrid CI? It can also help users enjoy music. The hybrid makes use of—and aims to preserve—residual hearing. Particularly in age-related hearing loss, residual hearing is usually in the low frequencies. So by combining this residual, low frequency hearing with high frequency hearing that has been amplified by the implant, the hybrid CI user has a fuller, rounder hearing experience.

Look for our story about hybrid CIs, written by Lina Reiss, Ph.D., a 2013 Second-Year HHF Emerging Research Grant (ERG) recipient, along with an ERG alumnus, Christopher Turner, Ph.D., who has published more than 20 papers on the topic. In addition, researchers at the University of Washington recently announced a new harmonic algorithm that allows CI users to better hear music, which we will detail in “Hearing Headlines.”

Finally, we have contributions from musicians who have hearing loss. Wendy Cheng started an association of amateur musicians with hearing loss, now 10 years old, and Nancy Williams is a member of HHF’s board and a pianist who has performed at New York City’s Carnegie Hall. Underscoring all these stories is the work our Hearing Restoration Project, which is working toward a cure for hearing loss and tinnitus—and the ability to once again enjoy music to its fullest.

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"Listen to Me, Right Now!"

By Yishane Lee

As a parent, I constantly think that my children aren’t listening. The number of times I repeat myself endlessly (usually accompanied by an escalation in volume) before I get an answer is enough to drive me bonkers. But a child who isn’t listening to you can be a sign of something more than a clash of wills.

If you find that your child doesn’t respond to repeated entreaties—especially when you’re not facing her—it could be a sign of a hearing loss.

It is one sign that Hearing Health magazine staff writer Barbara Jenkins, Au.D., BCABA, includes in her list of the most common signs of hearing loss in children of different ages, from infants to teenagers.

Despite universal newborn hearing screening in hospitals—an effort that HHF spearheaded in the 1990s that has been critical for early intervention treatment—hearing loss can be progressive and appear in children after you go home from the hospital and into the school years.

For instance, a baby who doesn’t react to a sudden noise, such as a toy dropping to the floor, may have a hearing loss. Evolutionarily speaking, humans (and all animals) make sounds in reaction to hearing sounds, so a hearing loss can be indicated when a baby does not make word-like sounds, such as “gaga” or “dada” by 10 months of age.

In fact, speech milestones are critical for making sure your child’s development—and hearing—are on track. (Also important is talking directly to your toddler, too, according to a new Stanford University study.) Talk to your pediatrician if you have any concerns, no matter how slight. A study in JAMA Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery found that parental concern and school hearing screens helped diagnose hearing loss after passing the newborn hearing screening.

As your child ages, there’s more opportunity for social interaction as well as picking up illnesses. Ear infections (otitis media, or infection of the middle ear) are one of the most common childhood infectious diseases requiring antibiotics. In young children the Eustachian tube has not fully developed, leaving the middle ear more likely to retain fluid that in the ears of older children gravity flushes out.

Since infections can last one to three months, with fluid blocking the ear, during that time hearing and speech both become impaired.

This can delay language acquisition and lead to learning issues. Left untreated, children who are prone to chronic ear infections are at risk of permanent hearing loss. Some of our 2013 Emerging Research Grant recipients (Ravinder Kaur, Ph.D.; Ani Manichaikul, Ph.D.; and Merri J. Rosen, Ph.D.) are working on developing a vaccine, identifying genetic predispositions, or otherwise mitigating the effects of this serious health issue in children.

Placing ear tubes in the ear are a common remedy for children with chronic ear infections. It’s a simple surgery, but requires general anesthesia, and repeated surgeries may be required if the tubes fall out. Our otolaryngologist recommended that my son, then just over a year old, get tubes to help with chronic fluid in the ear (without infections). But I couldn’t bring myself to do surgery when the ailment was something he would eventually grow out of. That said, it is a common, safe surgery that many children have benefited from.

Ear infections can be an obvious sign of potential hearing loss. So can needing the TV or stereo volume turned up, tilting the head forward, or having difficulty at school. Your child may even tell you straight out that he can’t hear you. As Jenkins writes, “This may seem obvious, but many parents assume that their children are not paying attention when in fact there may be an unidentified hearing loss.”

Review the signs your child may have a hearing loss here, and share your experience parenting a child with hearing loss below.