Lynn Kolofske visited the Costco Hearing Aid Center 4 years ago complaining of difficulty hearing and understanding speech. Once tested I discovered an asymmetrical hearing loss. Lynn had a 55.8% pure tone average on the left ear and a 15% PTA on the right ear. Due to the difference between ears I sent Lynn out with a medical referral before discussing hearing aids. After seeing an ENT Lynn was diagnosed with an Acoustic Neuroma with surgery being the only treatment available.
Due to Lynn’s marketing position within Costco it is crucial for her to hear sounds coming from all directions, so we made the decision to aid the left ear. The hearing instruments assisted with directionality and understanding until February 2016 when Lynn had sergry
FACTS: Respondent, Davis, a licensed LPN for over ten years who also lives with hearing loss applied for admissions to Southeastern Community College. The Petitioner, requested Davis see an audiologist before accepting her to the RN program. The audiologist concluded that Davis required lip-read in order to fully understand audible communication. The school subsequently denied Davis entry, assuming her hearing loss would affect her ability to effective care for patients safely.
Cochlear implants are amazing feats of biomedical engineering, and have helped many people regain the ability to hear. While there are some ethical dilemmas that go along with them, there is no denying just how amazing these implants really are. By understanding how the ear works, what causes it to stop working, and using science and engineering to fix that problem, there is now a way to give someone a sense they might have never been able to experience. It can be costly, but it could drastically change someone’s life. Some people may say for worse, but there will always be someone else to say it was for better. Overall, cochlear implants are an incredible invention and will continue to grow and only get better with technology.
Lane, Harlan (1992). “Cochlear Implants are Wrong for Young Deaf Children.” Viewpoints on Deafness. Ed. Mervin D. Garretson. National Association of the Deaf, Silver Spring, MD. 89-92.
Cochlear Implants only restore very limited audibility. When described by formerly hearing Deaf people they compare it to hearing underwater, “fuzzy and timbre” yet still able to discern some
“Music is perpetual, and only the hearing is intermittent,” wrote the iconic American essayist, poet and philosopher Henry David Thoreau, a lofty proclamation that inspired my focus to help those with hearing loss through restoration. After a winding journey in search for an academic focus, I discovered that audiology is far more than just aiding deaf or hard of hearing individuals, but restoring balance, managing loss through therapy, and discovering new research techniques that may involve auditory neuropathy spectrum disorder. After arriving at my destination, I also learned that it is my responsibility as a future audiologist to be a leader, to work hard toward achieving a better future for myself, and a better world for humanity at large. This vision drives my aspiration to join the University of South Florida’s graduate audiology program this coming fall, and continue my examination of clinical audiology as a member of your community.
Specific Purpose: To help people to understand what Audism is and that the lack of an ability to hear does not mean they are incapable of performing tasks.
Tucker, Bonnie. “Deaf Culture, Cochlear Implants, and Elective Disability.” Hastings Center Report. 28.4 (1998): 1-12. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 9 Dec. 2013.
Weise, Elizabeth. "Cochlear implants can be 'magic device' if put in early enough; Kids learn
...Doctors. To be clear, cochlear implant do not hold a miracle cure for deafness. There are some people that will come up to deaf people who they barely know, and tell them that we should get Cochlear Implants. And it is these ignorant people thought it would totally fix everything.
Marie Jean Philip was born on April 20, 1953, in Worchester, Massachusetts. She was the first-born child. Although she was born to deaf parents, Marie’s deafness came as a surprise for her parents. She had two sisters whom were also deaf. Deafness was hereditary in her family, however not everyone in her family was deaf. Marie’s father had one sister who was deaf and her mother had two siblings who were also deaf. When Marie was 11 months her parents noticed that she wasn’t responding to all noises. Her parents decided to test her hearing one day by creating noises behind Marie to see if she would respond. When Marie responded only to the loudest of noises, such as pots banging together, they found that at times she could hear with her right ear, but she could not hear anything out of her left.
National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. (November 2002). Retrieved October 17, 2004, from http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/hearing/coch.asp
The so called “curing” of deafness is seen by the Deaf Community as a way of
In my life, I've had a major setback that has changed how I live life day to day. When I was five, I was diagnosed with permanent hearing loss. I have hearing loss in both ears, mostly in higher frequencies, but I still have some hearing loss in the lower ones too. Since I was 5, it has only gotten worse, just in the past year there has been drastic changes in the frequencies that I can't hear. Hearing loss affects me day to day, for example if anyone whispers something to me, nine of ten times I can't hear what they are saying. My academics also get affected because sometimes I can't hear what we have for homework over all of the background noise of people packing up, so sometimes I just don't do homework because I never heard it in the first place. Not doing homework because I can't hear it affects my grades as I will get zeros for not doing it.
Hearing loss is often overlooked because our hearing is an invisible sense that is always expected to be in action. Yet, there are people everywhere that suffer from the effects of hearing loss. It is important to study and understand all aspects of the many different types and reasons for hearing loss. The loss of this particular sense can be socially debilitating. It can affect the communication skills of the person, not only in receiving information, but also in giving the correct response. This paper focuses primarily on hearing loss in the elderly. One thing that affects older individuals' communication is the difficulty they often experience when recognizing time compressed speech. Time compressed speech involves fast and unclear conversational speech. Many older listeners can detect the sound of the speech being spoken, but it is still unclear (Pichora-Fuller, 2000). In order to help with diagnosis and rehabilitation, we need to understand why speech is unclear even when it is audible. The answer to that question would also help in the development of hearing aids and other communication devices. Also, as we come to understand the reasoning behind this question and as we become more knowledgeable about what older adults can and cannot hear, we can better accommodate them in our day to day interactions.
Several assistive listening devices can improve the communication ability of deaf children. According to IDEA, every child with a disability is entitled to have access to assistive technology (California Department of Education, 2004). The California Department of Education (2004) outlines IDEA’s definition of an assistive technology device. It explains that this device consists of “any item, piece of equipment or product system…that is used to increase, maintain, or improve functional capabilities of a child with a disability” (California Department of Education, 2004, p. 1).