Sorry? What? Pardon?
You reach a certain age, and it seems you are inundated with emails inviting you for every test under the sun. What a way to celebrate turning 60 eh? Oh well, prevention is better than cure as they say….
The latest email to hit my in-box was from a well-known pharmacy chain inviting me for a hearing test. Funnily enough, my husband received a similar email and I have been nagging him to have a hearing test for a considerable number of years!
Hubby of course has always been very resistant to this (it is a fact that it can take up to 10 years to acknowledge, come to terms with and then address hearing loss) and he is very firmly in the “denial” stage of his age-related hearing loss. So, a deal was struck — if I have my hearing tested, would he agree to go as well? Hmmmm, well, he wasn’t keen but eventually we found ourselves in the Audiology Department of our local Boots for adjacent appointments. The lure of a large number of reward points sealed the deal apparently.
It would seem that “for our age” (strange how that phrase crops up with increasing regularity these days), our hearing is “within the normal range”. I definitely have a slight hearing loss in my left ear, but nothing significant to worry about as yet. Hubby reports that his hearing is “within the normal range”. Strange that….
To put this into context, the TV has certainly been getting louder over recent years and the volume on the radio and car stereo have more than kept pace with the rate of inflation! Conversations from room to room are harder and don’t bother to try and talk to me when I am drying my hair as I am totally incapable of hearing anything over the noise of the hairdryer! Hubby now spends a great deal of time NOT replying to me — he claims he hasn’t heard me. He is increasingly asking me to “look at me when you are talking to me” which of course I recognise as him wanting to read my lips to support his decreasing aural function. None of this is an unusual scenario for anyone 50+, and we have certainly both well passed that milestone.
So, it was something of a surprise when the Audiologist pronounced Hubby’s hearing not only “normal” but apparently better than mine! The explanation, apparently, is that as we age, we focus more intently on the task in hand, to the exclusion of other things around us. There is a reduction in hearing commensurate with age for us all, but the long and the short of it is that my Hubby officially suffers from that extremely serious condition known as “selective hearing”!
Oh the joys! However, there are several effective treatment methods for this most serious of conditions. These could include a kitchen embargo/cooking strike, sending him to Coventry, a suspension of laundry services — the list is endless and given time I am sure I could become extremely inventive here!
Recall and retest scheduled for 2 years time; it will be very interesting to see where we are at that point. Watch this space!