Hearing Loss

My grandmother lives in Cary, about 10 minutes away from campus. She is 74 years old and has a lot of health problems. One in particular that comes up often is her hearing loss. It has progressively gotten harder and harder for her to hear. My family members poke fun at her a lot when she can’t hear something. This situation happened a lot over Thanksgiving break. Hearing loss is a prevalent issue for many people, especially as they age. However, people that don’t experience hearing loss rarely see age-related hearing loss as a disability or even a problem. It is often just dismissed as something that comes along with being old.

According to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, disabling hearing loss affects 2% of adults aged 45 to 54, 8.5% for ages 55 to 64, 25% for the 65 to 74 range, and 50% for adults aged 75 and older. Despite the massive number of people that experience hearing loss, there is still such a bias against them.

Hearing aids are also crazy expensive and never user-friendly. My grandma always has to adjust the sound levels manually. If she doesn’t, surrounding voices and sounds are way too loud and hurt her ears, damaging them even more. Requiring over half of older adults to go through hoop after hoop just to be able to hear is not right.

How come healthcare companies can profit so heavily off a common disability? Why does society write off the problems of older adults when so many of us will eventually have the same exact issues? Who else benefits from this issue? How do our thoughts on older adults with hearing loss affect children born with hearing loss?