"Hearing Loss Is a Non-Healing Injury"

By Tara Guastella

Shannon Silvestri and her two teenage children attended the 2013 Boston Marathon to cheer on dad Kevin. It was the third time they’d be watching him run the marathon.

The family was invited to watch the race by Ashworth Awards, the company that creates the marathon medals and which is based in the same town where the family lives. They were at the Lenox Hotel, located at Exeter and Boylston streets in Boston. After Kevin ran by (finishing what would be his personal best race time), and Shannon received an automated text message that he had finished the race, they gathered their things, snapped a few photos, and began exiting out a side door of the Lenox on Exeter Street. Shannon was walking between her son in front of her, her daughter with a friend behind her, and two of her husband’s friends behind them.

As they were passing through the barricades set up to keep the thousands of spectators organized, the first explosion occurred. It was the first of two homemade pressure cooker bombs that exploded that day. The blast occurred to the left side of Shannon and her family, but the sound bounced off the building and hit Shannon in her right ear. “I could feel the air and the sound waves hit me,” she says. “I could really feel it.”

She immediately covered her ears, fell to the ground, and then looked front and back to check on her children. "Everything seemed like it was in slow motion," she says. Her daughter immediately let out a big scream, knowing her father was out there. Her son ran and Shannon finally found him a couple of streets away. Shannon says, "This was his fight-or-flight response."

Seconds later, the second blast occurred and again it hit Shannon in her right ear as she was turned to comfort her daughter. “It was such a strong feeling of pressure, or a blockage, in both my ears. It felt like I really needed to pop them,” she says. “All I could hear was a muffled chaotic mess and when I looked back all I saw was smoke, debris, and metal barricades flying through the air as people were trying to escape the horror that just occurred.”

Shannon thought terrorists were attacking the city by plane. Her cousin’s husband was killed in the 9/11 attacks so this was the first thing that came to mind. Needing to find Kevin, they headed toward the family meeting area even though law enforcement was trying to keep people from entering this area. Shannon remembers thinking, “I don’t care how many pieces he is in, I am taking him home.” She felt selfish, hurt, empty, alone, and every other emotion she could think of. She didn’t care what scenario she was bringing her kids into, she had to bring the four of them home together.

What the family didn’t realize at the time was that they were closer to the blasts than Kevin was. At the time of the explosions, Kevin was farther down the road, past the finish line, picking up his finisher medal.

Since cell phone service wasn’t working properly, one of Kevin’s friends who was with the family ran ahead to find him. "He was like my superman, whipping off his jacket and saying, ‘I will find him,’” Shannon says. Suddenly, she saw Kevin emerge with the friend. Kevin was uninjured.

Shannon hugged him and remembers saying, “These are the times I appreciate your stubbornness.” Kevin had earlier said he wanted to beat his first marathon time.

Next the family attempted to get out of Boston but everything was on lockdown, including Shannon’s car. They decided to walk the nearly three miles to the Boston Athletic Club. Her son was very upset that Shannon had scraped her knee and wanted to get her something for it. The family stayed there for almost four hours. It was very emotional with people hugging, crying, and reuniting with family and friends.

Shannon went into a restroom because she felt like she needed a good cry but didn’t want to do so in front of her kids. Inside, she met a young teenage girl who worked at the club. The girl couldn’t get in touch with her mother and was frightened by the stories she was hearing. “I told her that I’m a mother and asked if she wanted a hug,” Shannon says. The girl hugged her tightly and the two cried together for a few minutes and then felt better.

Later that week after the bombings, Shannon’s left ear “popped” as did her son’s ears. As for Shannon's right ear, that never popped. Luckily, her daughter’s ears were unaffected.

To help survivors cope with the events of last year’s bombing, Shannon started a website called Boston Strong: Strength, Courage, & Healing and she began making Boston Strong pins/charms. All of the proceeds go to help survivors.

Over a year later, Shannon’s hearing in her right ear has worsened, as has her tinnitus, and her left ear also has a degree of hearing loss. Certain noises and sensations cause pain, a condition known as hyperacusis, so she decided not to get hearing aids. Her audiologist told her that at some point she may lose most if not all hearing in her right ear.

Recently, Shannon accepted a position at the Massachusetts Office of Victim Assistance, which has been instrumental in helping marathon survivors. She will be leading a peer-to-peer support network for people who sustained hearing loss as a result of the blasts. Shannon says she wants to help others cope. “People don’t recognize hearing loss as something that is life-changing. It’s a non-healing injury,” she says.

How My Sudden Hearing Loss Paved the Way to a New Life's Mission

By Monique Hammond, Guest Blogger

Like everyone else does, I took my clean, crisp hearing for granted. But over a four-hour period in September 2005, I lost my hearing in my left ear. That same day, an intense vertigo attack made the world spin out of control. I became violently ill and spent the next two days in the hospital. My whole inner ear and nerves had come under attack.

The final verdict was that I had suffered a sudden sensorineural hearing loss (SSHL), which is considered a medical emergency. The doctors suspected the cause to be a viral infection complicated by an excessively loud noise exposure from a church fundraiser the day before. I largely credit the treatment of oral steroids and antiviral medication that I received at the very start for being able to regain limited hearing.

The “ear event,” as I like to call it, has left me with a severe one-sided hearing loss, never-ending, high-pitched tinnitus, and annoying sound sensitivities, which make the adjustment of hearing aids quite tricky. Although hearing aids have helped many people beyond their wildest dreams, they have not been tremendously effective for me. Strangely enough, I feel that my hearing aid helps me more with stability—as I am still plagued by pesky balance issues—than with hearing acuity.  

Going back to work only reinforced the realization that my job was eroding right from under me: I simply could not function safely and effectively anymore in the noise-confused environment of the hospital pharmacy that was my place of work. I had enjoyed my work and coworkers and I also appreciated my paycheck. Losing all of that has been emotionally a most difficult adjustment.

I am quite open about my challenges as I have found that to be the best policy for me. I am lucky because my friends and family have been very supportive. Over time, they have come to appreciate the varied challenges that hearing loss bestows on those affected. Yes, I must remind them now and then not to talk to me through walls. But sometimes people forget.  

Of all the hearing-related issues that I have come across, I have chosen noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL) as the focus for any of my training, education, and advocacy efforts. Why? Because this is a preventable disability that is on a steep rise. The damage is irreversible but completely avoidable. As yet there is no cure for any kind of hearing loss, and organized public education on this timely topic as well as on hearing loss in general is greatly lacking. (Learn about research toward a cure by HHF’s Hearing Restoration Project.)

All my life I have been a big believer in prevention and education and from that aspect nothing has changed. This why I wrote my book, “What Did You Say?,” and why I bring my new life mission—to help people hear better longer—into a gaping public education void.

These days I am kept busy working with support groups, leading training sessions, doing public speaking, and writing articles and a blog. Although I do use Facebook connected to my website, my favorite social medium is Twitter. It is an ideal tool to keep up with news and research and to communicate information about a myriad of hearing loss topics to my followers.

Yes, the journey into the world of hearing loss has been a long and often thorny road paved with fears and tears but also with plenty of revelations and amazement. Life is different now, but as Senator Hubert H. Humphrey once said: “It is not what they take away from you that counts. It's what you do with what you have left.”

Monique Hammond is a registered pharmacist and the author of “What Did You Say? An Unexpected Journey Into the World of Hearing Loss.” Learn more at moniquehammond.com.

Boston Bombings Leave Doctors Using Wartime Surgeries to Fix Social Work Student's Ruptured Ear Cavity

By Tara Guastella

On April 15, 2013, Lauren Vulcano, then a 24-year-old school counseling graduate student, and her boyfriend Mark Snickenberger, also then 24, were watching Mark’s brother run in the 2013 Boston Marathon. The events that unfolded that day changed the way Lauren will hear forever.

The day was as pleasant as any until the first backpack containing a homemade pressure cooker bomb exploded. Lauren was standing just four feet away. “I first felt a very calming feeling, almost euphoric,” she says. “I could really feel the heat and it felt nice, like being on beach—but I was completely unaware of what was happening. It felt like five minutes but in reality it was only a matter of seconds.”

Mark panicked and grabbed Lauren to try and move her away from the scene. She stood still with both of her hands covering her ears standing perfectly straight—like a “telephone pole,” she says. Lauren tried to plug her ears as hard as she could since the extreme loudness and subsequent ringing in her ears (tinnitus) physically hurt.

Suddenly Lauren’s right ear started to bleed just as the second bomb exploded; she learned later that her eardrum had ruptured. “Mark put his arm around me and guided or dragged me down the street, pressing my injured right ear against his left shoulder to apply pressure,” Lauren says.  “Finally I snapped out of the state of shock and began to understand what was going on.” Once Lauren and Mark made it to a safe location in an AT&T store, Lauren noticed the eight-inch gash on the side of Mark’s leg with blood pouring out of it.

Lauren and Mark are circled in the above photo as they escaped from the Boston Marathon bombing.

Lauren began taking off her coat in an attempt to take care of her boyfriend’s leg. She then realized her own shoulder was bleeding. “Since we didn’t know what was in the air, I was instructed to put my coat back on,” says Lauren. “I felt so helpless because I wanted to do something to help Mark since he saved my life by dragging me out of the bomb scene.”

As she made attempts to scream and call for help, Lauren realized she couldn’t hear herself screaming, and she thought no one else could hear her screaming either. “In the AT&T store, someone brought a wheelchair in for me and then they ran Mark into the medical tent,” Lauren says.

Lauren and Mark are circled in the above photo as they escaped from the Boston Marathon bombing.

While they were tending to Mark’s leg, Lauren left to find Mark’s mom. “After a quick discussion of who should go with him to the hospital, Mark’s mom said ‘no, you go. He needs you.’ I grabbed his stretcher and helped the first responders run it to an ambulance. When no one instructed us which ambulance to go to, I just picked one and started pulling his stretcher into its back entrance.”

Lauren was so worried about Mark’s leg that it wasn’t until they arrived at the hospital that she realized she also had a black eye and her forehead was bleeding. Once at the hospital, Lauren says she finally felt safe and laid down beside Mark to let the doctors care for them both.

“I was examined by the on-call ear surgeon who had an impeccable bedside manner, given the situation,” Lauren says. “I then learned that a BB from the bomb had gone straight into my ear, hit the cochlea, and bounced out, rupturing my eardrum and shattering the malleus bone [a small middle ear bone].”

Lauren was later released from the hospital and arrived home around 9 or 10pm that evening; Mark had to stay overnight. A piece of nylon from the backpack that contained the bomb had melted into Lauren’s hair and a portion of skin on the right side of her head was burned so badly from the explosive heat that her hair fell out. “Not wanting to be alone that night I made my mom give me a sponge bath and then stayed on the phone with Mark for the remainder of the night.”

The following day Lauren went to visit the ear surgeon at the surgeon’s office. Since the loud blast Lauren experienced is considered a military injury, not a civilian injury, her doctors continually consulted with military physicians.

Lauren’s doctor used an updated version of an old wartime surgery technique. In the past working out on the field, wartime doctors would place a piece of cigarette paper between the pieces of the eardrum in hopes some of the skin cells would "crawl" across the paper to make a skin graft. Today this surgery is more complex with better material used, but it didn’t work for Lauren’s ear. “For several months, my ear was just still too damaged for the skin graft to take,” Lauren says. “I had a real surgery in June and when that didn’t work, my doctor referred me to Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary.”

Lauren had another surgery in August and when that didn't work, they tried a number of those "quick fixes" again. In each of these surgeries another piece of Lauren’s ear injury puzzle is revealed. “My next surgery will be where I receive a prosthetic malleus. It's frustrating that after a year of the best medical care, my ear hasn't gotten much better. It's just too damaged from the blast,” she says.

Even after undergoing three surgeries and still not being able to hear out of her right ear, Lauren graduated on time (taking extra classes) from her master’s program earning a dual license in school guidance counseling as well as school social work/adjustment counseling and will be a school guidance counselor this fall.

“As I was sitting in classes learning about things like post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, I began to become very aware of my own symptoms,” Lauren says. “I knew how to identify the signs and I knew what these conditions looked like.”

Living through the blasts, though taxing on health and personal life, has greatly benefited her career, she says. “This past year I had a full-time internship at an elementary school. Feeling things firsthand really helped me to become aware of children’s symptoms much more accurately since I knew exactly what to look for,” she says.

Another aspect that helped Lauren overcome the experience of the explosions and her hearing loss is being able to talk about it. “I am naturally a ‘chatty Cathy,’ so when I went back to classes after the bombing I didn’t want people to ignore the elephant in the room—that I was in a bombing. I wanted to lay it all out there and give them an opportunity to ask me questions so it was all out in the open,” she says. “So I asked my professors if I could give a presentation of how I escaped after the bombing and talk about it with classmates.” All of Lauren’s professors were incredibly understanding, she says.

As she first began sharing her experience, Lauren would sob through the entire narration of the day’s events. Now after being completely open about it for over a year, Lauren can recount that day without a tear in her eye. Lauren, Mark, and Mark’s brother ran the 2014 Boston Marathon with other marathon blast survivors, including the Campbell family, Dave Fortier, Lynn Crisci, Shannon Silvestri, and many others.

Boston Marathon Injuries

By Yishane Lee

Last year, Dave Fortier ran the Boston Marathon in honor of a friend who has leukemia. He experienced up close the two bomb blasts that forever altered the event, becoming one of the nearly 300 people who were injured. A piece of shrapnel became embedded in his right foot, and the immediate ringing in the ears he experienced is now permanent.

Fortier’s foot healed quickly and he was able to race the New York City Marathon seven months later, again to raise funds for leukemia research. But while supporting his friend will always be a priority, Fortier now has a personal interest in promoting the search for a cure for hearing loss and tinnitus. “On long runs I think about things I want to do, and after finishing Boston again this year, my first thought has been to take care of my hearing,” says Fortier, who lives in Newburyport, Mass. “I’m very happy to be supporting Hearing Health Foundation and the search for a cure.”

Fortier, 49, and members of a Boston Marathon survivors support group are running the New Hampshire Reach the Beach Relay in September. The race spans 200 miles and 24 hours, with each member of a 12-person team taking separate legs—including during the middle of the night—totaling nearly 17 miles each.

“Before this year’s Boston Marathon, everybody in this survivor community felt a lot of unity. We had 28 people running the race, and many were first-time marathoners like Chris Campbell,” Fortier says. “I could really see we all felt a sense of belonging, and one of my biggest fears was that after the finish line this feeling would end for all of us. So we quietly went online and registered for Reach the Beach, and when someone asked, ‘Gosh, what do we do next?’ we had an answer—I said, ‘Well guys, we’ve got something for you, if you’re interested—I signed us all up for this race.’”

Fortier says they easily filled one 12-person team, and the personal investment in finding a cure affects several who are running.

“If you see the videos and photos of when the first explosion happens, I’m the guy with a black hat and black shorts who is right behind the gentleman who falls,” he says. “I’m reaching up and holding the side of my head. The sound—it felt like someone hit me with a brick. I actually thought someone behind me had cuffed my ear with a fist. I just remember that pain. The ringing happened instantaneously.”

He adds, “The ringing today is as loud as it was that day. I’ve learned to suppress it a little bit, but when I start talking about it and thinking about it, I can hear it. It’s ever present.”

Although his hearing loss in his left ear, which was facing the first blast, is so far mild, Fortier has been taking steps to compensate. “Now I tell people when I’m first meeting them that I will be leaning toward them to hear better, so they don’t think I’m getting in their personal space for no reason. I’ve also learned to look at the speaker’s lips for clues,” he says.

At night, Fortier uses a combination of white noise and low-volume talk radio to tamp down the tinnitus. “But I’m lucky if I get three solid hours a night. If something wakes me up—like the dog needing to go out at 3:30 a.m.—well, then, I’m up for the day.”

“My injuries were so minor compared with everyone else, but while the stitches in my foot are long gone, for me hearing is the bigger issue for sure,” he says. Fortier is excited and encouraged by the progress of the Hearing Restoration Project (HRP), including the groundbreaking regeneration of inner ear hair cells in adult mice by Albert Edge, Ph.D., an HRP consortium member at Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, Harvard Medical School.

Unlike other species, such as birds and fish, mammals lose their hearing permanently once inner ear hair cells are damaged by, for instance, a sudden loud noise. The HRP’s goal is to translate the ability of birds and fish to naturally regenerate hair cells to mammals, including humans.

Meet Les Paul Ambassador Saxophonist Chris Potter

By Yishane Lee

Chris Potter is a world-renowned saxophonist and composer who has been living with Ménière’s disease, a hearing and balance disorder, for two decades. We’re thrilled that he is our second Les Paul Ambassador.

The Les Paul Ambassadors were created with the Les Paul Foundation to honor guitar great Les Paul, who had hearing loss and tinnitus. The program promotes awareness of tinnitus and hearing loss and the search for a cure through our groundbreaking Hearing Restoration Project.

We profile Potter in our Spring issue of Hearing Health magazine. Here is an excerpt:

“I got Ménière’s disease in my mid-20s. I’ve lost pretty much all my hearing in my left ear—there’s just ringing. It was absolutely terrifying. I was getting episodes of dizziness, and my hearing would go up and down. In the meantime, I’d have to wake up at 5 a.m. and take three flights to get to a performance that night—when I didn’t even know if I would be able to stand up.

“It was very stressful, as was not knowing if it would happen in both ears, but I somehow made it through. It’s something you get used to. But the vertigo alone is life-altering. You don’t feel comfortable making plans.”

Potter tried various treatments with different degrees of success. He shares his story in an effort to show solidarity with other musicians who have hearing issues, and to help HHF find a cure for hearing loss and tinnitus.

Read more from Potter’s candid interview about being a musician with hearing loss and Ménière’s disease.

Learn more about the amazing Les Paul, who died in 2009 at age 94, and the industry-altering advances he made in the world of music production and technology. His dear friend Lou Pallo, a guitar hero in his own right, was our first Les Paul Ambassador.

Boston Marathon Bombing Inspires Family to Run to Cure Hearing Loss and Tinnitus

By Tara Guastella

Last April 15 was a life-changing day for the Campbell family—as it was for many who attended one of the greatest annual sporting events: the Boston Marathon. This year, the Campbell family is not only running their first ever Boston marathon but fundraising to cure for hearing loss and tinnitus. We wanted to share their story with you and hope you'll join us in supporting their marathon run.

Out of the 264 people injured on the day of the Boston Marathon bombing, the Massachusetts Office of Victim Assistance (MOVA) now estimates that at least 150 are experiencing hearing loss or tinnitus.

Jean Campbell is one those people, and this is her and her family’s story.

The days preceding the big race, a friend from Atlanta who was running the race stayed at the Campbell home in New Hampshire. Early the morning of April 15, Jean’s husband Christopher, his wife Jean, and their three sons Corey, Trevor, and Mitchell headed to Boston to watch the friend and several others run the race. (Corey has a mild hearing loss and Trevor moderate to profound hearing loss. Trevor wears hearing aids.) The family was split into two groups since the sons went to different schools and arrived at the race at different times. Jean and youngest son Mitchell were together and Christopher was with the two older sons, Corey and Trevor.

Chris, Jean, Trevor, Mitchell, and Corey Campbell

The two groups ended up on opposite sides of Hereford and Commonwealth Avenue while watching the race. After their friend Diane ran by, both groups started to head to the finish line on Boylston Street. Jean was busy taking photographs of other runners, and like any teenage son, Mitchell urged his mother to hurry up and the two began to bicker. Mitchell was eager to get to the finish line and starting to get impatient. “If we hadn’t been bickering, we would have been closer to the explosions,” says Jean, referring to the two homemade pressure-cooker bombs that exploded that day.

“That blast felt like a hurricane and immediately, it looked like a war zone,” she says. Jean has a sensorineural hearing loss in both ears, she instinctively leaned her “better ear”, the left one toward the first blast. “I knew immediately my hearing loss had worsened,” she says. As a result of the bombings, she also lost discrimination in both of her ears and her tinnitus worsened.

Jean and Mitchell ran for their lives clinging to one another. Jean immediately knew it was a bomb. “ I felt like we were in a movie,” Jean says. To get off the street, they ran into a Crate & Barrel store. “The very competent staff helped us escape through a back door,” she says. “They were incredibly kind and helpful. It was almost as if they were trained for it.” Jean adds that Mitchell remained very calm and collected throughout the day’s events, even after getting hit with a piece of shrapnel and his existing tinnitus growing much worse.

At the moment the blasts were occurring, Christopher and his two older sons happened to be taking a shortcut through the Sheraton Hotel to get to the finish line more quickly. “I couldn’t hear a thing,” Christopher says. “I didn’t even know the bombs had gone off.” Corey and Trevor were worried and frantic wondering where Jean and Micthell were. Since cell phone service was quickly overwhelmed following the explosions, the family could not contact one another. It wasn’t until 10pm that night—back in New Hampshire—that the family was reunited.

As soon as the blasts happened, Jean knew she had to see her audiologist at Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary as she could not hear out of her right ear. She says she had the fleeting thought of trying to go to the hospital in Boston, but at the time it was unclear whether the entire city was under attack. “I needed to find the rest of my family and get out of there,” she says. Jean has bilateral hearing aids and is in a support group for people injured in the Boston Marathon bombings.

One year later, the Campbell family is running the 2014 Boston Marathon in support of Jean and her recovery. They are fundraising to support Hearing Health Foundation and our search for a cure for hearing loss and tinnitus through the Hearing Restoration Project (HRP). The Campbell family has lived through a traumatic event but since there had been hearing loss in their family, they feel they were slightly better equipped to handle the confusion and depression that can come with sudden hearing loss. “We think educating people about what to expect, and how to cope, is important,” Christopher says.

The Campbells are very encouraged by the strides Hearing Health Foundation and our HRP consortium have made so far toward finding a cure for hearing loss and tinnitus, such as early success with regenerating sensitive inner ear hair cells in adult mice that, in all mammals, once damaged through noise or age lead to permanent hearing loss.

Please join us in supporting the Campbell family as they tackle their first marathon and give hope for a cure within a decade.

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.

Don’t miss out on all this and more - subscribe  to Hearing Health magazine for free today!

"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.