The boys were here last night. A medium sized invasion, three of them with two gaming systems and a laptop. The evening passed as usual. They played "annoy Jeanie but don't actually make her angry" and GTA and some music. They told me about their new YouTube channel, in which they make me seasick by playing Minecraft while verbally abusing one another, and picked on me for needing the captioning.
You know, just regular hanging at Jeanie's fare. They like it here because, for the most part, they get to do whatever they want. That's how I lure them in and make them my minions! Anyway... this morning I was talking to them as they were packing up all their stuff to go. Suddenly one of them stops, stares at me for a second, and turns to the one who is my actual kin. He says "How is she hearing us?"
A lot of people seem to think hearing loss is like the world's volume has been turned down 24/7 to the same level. That might be true for some, but not anyone I know. It's more like the world's volume is turned down to varying levels throughout the day - and for a glorious moment after my ears pop, the volume is almost normal!
The best depictions I've seen are both episodes of The Walking Dead. Season 9, episode 11 features a (silent) scene from a deaf character's POV. Season 10, episode 5 opens with the POV of a character with hearing loss... volume fading in and out as she hunts a boar. (And I know some of y'all are groaning because I'm talking about that show again.)
There are certain pitches I can't hear at all. One friend of mine thought I was joking when I said I can't hear cicadas. Or maybe I can hear them, faintly, but I think the sound is part of the tinnitus. I pretty much constantly hear that, at varying levels - right now it's like what you hear when you put a seashell to your ear.
I could hear the boys today because my internal noise and their external noise (games and music) were largely absent. The ones I was responding to were facing me, so quasi-lipreading helped.
FYI, I did have a hearing aid. It broke twice in a year and is no longer covered. My Medicare supplement does give me 500 bucks a year toward ears, eyes, and teeth. Hearing aids tend to start at four digits.
