hearing stuff

[Leslie Bartlett]

I just got my butt kicked really hard today.... Actually my audiologist
allowed me to mess things up and  let me find out on my own.  Talking to
Danny Moore, who's mostly doing sound systems, I downloaded a little spectum
analyzer and saw all this stuff that real people can hear, so I went to
suggesting  radical changes be made to my hearing aids.  She was as
accomodating  as she could be, but now I am plagued with feedback in every
program.  We'll get that fixed in a couple weeks, and in the meantime I can
control the volume.   But the grating truth I learned today after being told
several times that once something's gone it is GONE. No amount of technology
will bring it back.  For instance if I've lost 70% of my hearing at 5,000
cycles, the best hearing aids can do is work with the 30% that's left, and
hope to goodness they don't overpower that, thus further damaging things.
So  if the threshold of "painful hearing"  is 100%, and I hear zero until
the sound is amplified to 70%   I have only that 30% span to go from zero to
100%, as the "painful hearing" threshold for me is the same as for normally
hearing. Pain is pain, and once you get there, it hurts.  It is NOT like you
add technology and things get fixed at all. There is no fixing what is
totally broken.  If an 8 cylinder car is running only on two, now matter
what you try to do to beef it up, it will never be an 8 again unless it can
run on 8 cylinders. And hearing which is lost can NEVER be restored, only
"aided" some.     So if you put a turbo on the 2 cylinders, it'll help a
bit, but it will never again run like an 8.  This is not a fun thing to
realize..  So, though I've done some pretty high level tuning, I am having
to adapt to what is a real handicap, and it won't get better. I'll never
hear the 2nd partial of C8- never, even though my hearing aids go to 9500
hz.  That part of my hearing mechanism is just flat gone and it will never
be back.

So all the discussion about soft and hard blows is moot when one has killed
off the hairs in the cochlea.  Each time one does "damage", something is
lost which will never be recovered in its original state no matter what
technology makes available.  Often the damge is done, even decades can pass
before it actually shows up, but it will.  It's a sad lesson I learned today
as my audiologist tried once again to explain, and finally let me boost
things to where I figured I'd get some of this high stuff back. IT IS JUST
GONE! DEAD.  It will never be back.  I wear hearing protection for
everything I do above the level of the choir I direct. So for those with
genetic disposition to hearing loss, and others who are disposed by age or
medical factors, beware....   When it's gone, it's gone.  I wasn't finally
hit with that until my programs had done more compensating than they should,
and still NOTHING of the frequencies above 5,000 were accessible- learned
while tuning a Hamburg with 20cents variation for a concert tomorrow night.
This may have been said numerous times before, but I didn't get it. Today,
sadly, I got it in the most kind and brutal  realization- experience, the
best teacher.  .  (Oh, by the way, the spectrum analyzer, about 20 bucks, is
cool.)
les bartlett
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