No one anticipates a life-altering experience when you’re a college student living a seemingly carefree life with minimal interruptions, enjoying your youth, and spending most mornings sleeping in and watching SportsCenter. This is the typical college student life I envisioned, but it wasn’t the one I lived.
Hearing Well Matters — All Day, Every Day
When, 20 years ago, Delane started to lose her own hearing, she decided she would not let that happen to her. She wanted to remain vibrant and engaged with life—not invisible or isolated. Her audiologist, the same one she still sees at age 90, instructed her to wear her hearing aids all day, every day.
Veterans Leading the Way
HHF leaders John Dillard and Timothy Higdon are two U.S. Army veterans who bring, collectively, over four decades of military service to HHF as its Board of Directors chair and CEO, respectively. Here they share the perspectives and experiences gained from their service in the military and what they hope to accomplish in their new roles.
Out of My Shell
Hearing loss came into my life when I was a college junior. I would not have recognized my issues had I not been taking a class in speech education that included a unit on communication disorders.
Out of the Box
Even though I work with individuals with disabilities, starting the process of treating my hearing loss feels like I’ve been thrown into a new world about which I know so little. After my hearing test and official diagnosis, I was shown a few hearing aid models to choose a pair. Simple, right?
Inside My Head
My difficulty became noticeable when I was working as a newspaper reporter in the late 1990s. I could manage okay on the phone but had trouble following conversations in person if there was any ambient noise. Crowd situations were unbearable.
A Wonderful Stroke of Luck
My stroke eliminated the 20-year age difference between Bruce and me, making me older than him in some ways. I was supposed to be pushing him around in a wheelchair at this stage of our lives. He is, after all, 94 years old.
Katelyn and Solenne
Sisters Katelyn, 12, and Solenne, 11, of Connecticut, are among the tens of millions of individuals who benefit from advances in hearing loss research. Both girls were born with severe to profound hearing loss but showed no benefit from hearing aids. They have both since received cochlear implants (CIs).
Family Ties
My own difficulty hearing came on so gradually it was hard to notice. But I do remember vividly the day I realized the difference between my left and right ears. I was then a parent of three young children, living in Bayonne in a two-family house with my mother.
Restoring Teachable Moments
Terry Harris, who lives with a severe-profound sensorineural hearing loss, teaches special education in Glenview, IL. His life and profession changed dramatically when he experienced three months of total deafness — prompting him at age 40 to undergo cochlear implant (CI) surgery to restore his access to sound.