Hear What You've Been Missing: How to Cope with Hearing Loss


Book Description

An Indispensable Guide to Better Communication. Our ability to hear keeps us connected to the world, and any degree of hearing loss can be frustrating and isolating. If you or someone you love has trouble hearing, this book will help improve your communication and quality of life. Hear What You’ve Been Missing outlines the many tools and strategies available to overcome the effects of hearing loss. Audiologist Donna Wayner answers common questions about causes and treatment of hearing loss, hearing aids and other assistive listening devices, medications and surgery, and more. This reassuring guide provides solutions that will help you: Make conversation easier Communicate well in social situations Enjoy music, radio, and television Improve performance at work or school Determine which assistive listening devices and systems are right for you




Hear & Beyond


Book Description

Hearing loss doesn’t come with an operating manual—until now. If you have hearing loss, you already know that the conventional approach to treatment is focused on hearing-aid technology. Without a handbook to help you figure out how to actually live with it, you’ve likely been getting by on information pieced together from various sources—and yet, communication often seems incomplete and unsatisfying. What’s missing from this hearing care model is the big picture—a real-life illustration of how hearing loss, its emotions, and its barriers affect every corner of your life. Now, hearing-health advocates, consultants, and speakers Shari Eberts and Gael Hannan offer a new skills-based approach to hearing loss that is centered not on hearing better, but on communicating better. With honesty and humor, they share their own hearing loss journeys, and outline invaluable insights, strategies, and workarounds to help you engage with the world and be heard. You’ll gain tips for navigating all areas impacted by hearing loss, including relationships, work, technology; strategies for adopting a new, empowering mindset towards your hearing loss; and communication behaviors that can make almost any listening situation manageable. Informed by the lived experiences of thousands of people living with hearing loss, and corroborated by hearing science, technological advances, and modern hearing-care principles, Hear & Beyond offers a new way forward to greater connection and engagement—whether you’re new to hearing loss or have been living with it for a long time. Hearing loss is just one aspect of who you are, among many others. You may have hearing loss, but it doesn’t have to have you.




How Hearing Loss Impacts Relationships


Book Description

This is the first book written exclusively for families that explains how to manage the frustrations of a highly resistant loved one who won't seek treatment for hearing loss. It peels exposes what is behind the resistance. Vanity, stigma and denial are addressed and steps are provided on how to conquer the emotional and psychological consequences that often bring crisis to the entire family. Besides fascinating insights into the psychological mechanisms behind resistance, clarified is the essential role family members play in shifting their loved one from "struggling to hear" to "hearing independence." This book will inspire profound changes and a higher quality of life for everyone.




On Being Human


Book Description

An inspirational memoir about how Jennifer Pastiloff's years of waitressing taught her to seek out unexpected beauty, how hearing loss taught her to listen fiercely, how being vulnerable allowed her to find love, and how imperfections can lead to a life full of wild happiness. Centered around the touchstone stories Jen tells in her popular workshops, On Being Human is the story of how a starved person grew into the exuberant woman she was meant to be all along by battling the demons within and winning. Jen did not intend to become a yoga teacher, but when she was given the opportunity to host her own retreats, she left her thirteen-year waitressing job and said “yes,” despite crippling fears of her inexperience and her own potential. After years of feeling depressed, anxious, and hopeless, in a life that seemed to have no escape, she healed her own heart by caring for others. She has learned to fiercely listen despite being nearly deaf, to banish shame attached to a body mass index, and to rebuild a family after the debilitating loss of her father when she was eight. Through her journey, Jen conveys the experience most of us are missing in our lives: being heard and being told, “I got you.” Exuberant, triumphantly messy, and brave, On Being Human is a celebration of happiness and self-realization over darkness and doubt. Her complicated yet imperfectly perfect life path is an inspiration to live outside the box and to reject the all-too-common belief of “I am not enough.” Jen will help readers find, accept, and embrace their own vulnerability, bravery, and humanness.




The Way I Hear It


Book Description

If you think hearing loss is just a condition of old age-think again. In The Way I Hear It, Gael Hannan explodes one myth after another in a witty and insightful journey into life with hearing loss at every age. Blending personal stories with practical strategies, Gael shines a light onto a world of communication challenges: a marriage proposal without hearing aids in, pillow talk and other relationships, raising a child, going to the movies, dining out, ordering at the drive-thru, in the classroom, on the job and hearing technology. Part memoir, part survival guide, The Way I Hear It offers tips for effective communication, poetic reflections, and heart-warming stories from people she has met in her workshops and at conferences throughout North America. Gael's humorous stories are backed by hearing loss research, and she offers advice on how to bridge the gap between consumer and professional in order to get the best possible hearing health care. The Way I Hear It is a book for people with hearing loss-but also for their families, friends and the professionals who serve them. Gael Hannan shares not only the daily frustrations, but also a strong message of hope and optimism for living successfully with hearing loss....




Occupational Noise Exposure


Book Description

In the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, Congress declared that its purpose was to assure, so far as possible, safe and healthful working conditions for every working man and woman and to preserve our human resources. In this Act, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) is charged with recommending occupational safety and health standards and describing exposure concentrations that are safe for various periods of employment-including but not limited to concentrations at which no worker will suffer diminished health, functional capacity, or life expectancy as a result of his or her work experience. By means of criteria documents, NIOSH communicates these recommended standards to regulatory agencies (including the Occupational Safety and Health Administration [OSHA]) and to others in the occupational safety and health community. Criteria documents provide the scientific basis for new occupational safety and health standards. These documents generally contain a critical review of the scientific and technical information available on the prevalence of hazards, the existence of safety and health risks, and the adequacy of control methods. In addition to transmitting these documents to the Department of Labor, NIOSH also distributes them to health professionals in academic institutions, industry, organized labor, public interest groups, and other government agencies. In 1972, NIOSH published Criteria for a Recommended Standard: Occupational Exposure to Noise, which provided the basis for a recommended standard to reduce the risk of developing permanent hearing loss as a result of occupational noise exposure [NIOSH 1972]. NIOSH has now evaluated the latest scientific information and has revised some of its previous recommendations. The 1998 recommendations go beyond attempting to conserve hearing by focusing on preventing occupational noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL). This criteria document reevaluates and reaffirms the recommended exposure limit (REL) for occupational noise exposure established by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) in 1972. The REL is 85 decibels, A-weighted, as an 8-hr time-weighted average (85 dBA as an 8-hr TWA). Exposures at or above this level are hazardous. By incorporating the 4000-Hz audiometric frequency into the definition of hearing impairment in the risk assessment, NIOSH has found an 8% excess risk of developing occupational noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL) during a 40-year lifetime exposure at the 85-dBA REL. NIOSH has also found that scientific evidence supports the use of a 3-dB exchange rate for the calculation of TWA exposures to noise. The recommendations in this document go beyond attempts to conserve hearing by focusing on prevention of occupational NIHL. For workers whose noise exposures equal or exceed 85 dBA, NIOSH recommends a hearing loss prevention program (HLPP) that includes exposure assessment, engineering and administrative controls, proper use of hearing protectors, audiometric evaluation, education and motivation, recordkeeping, and program audits and evaluations. Audiometric evaluation is an important component of an HLPP. To provide early identification of workers with increasing hearing loss, NIOSH has revised the criterion for significant threshold shift to an increase of 15 dB in the hearing threshold level (HTL) at 500, 1000, 2000, 3000, 4000, or 6000 Hz in either ear, as determined by two consecutive tests. To permit timely intervention and prevent further hearing losses in workers whose HTLs have increased because of occupational noise exposure, NIOSH no longer recommends age correction on individual audiograms.




Hearing Loss


Book Description

Millions of Americans experience some degree of hearing loss. The Social Security Administration (SSA) operates programs that provide cash disability benefits to people with permanent impairments like hearing loss, if they can show that their impairments meet stringent SSA criteria and their earnings are below an SSA threshold. The National Research Council convened an expert committee at the request of the SSA to study the issues related to disability determination for people with hearing loss. This volume is the product of that study. Hearing Loss: Determining Eligibility for Social Security Benefits reviews current knowledge about hearing loss and its measurement and treatment, and provides an evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of the current processes and criteria. It recommends changes to strengthen the disability determination process and ensure its reliability and fairness. The book addresses criteria for selection of pure tone and speech tests, guidelines for test administration, testing of hearing in noise, special issues related to testing children, and the difficulty of predicting work capacity from clinical hearing test results. It should be useful to audiologists, otolaryngologists, disability advocates, and others who are concerned with people who have hearing loss.




Cochlear Implant Basics


Book Description




Anxiety: The Missing Stage of Grief


Book Description

With this groundbreaking book, discover the critical connections between anxiety and grief—and learn practical strategies for healing, based on the Kübler-Ross stages model. If you're suffering from anxiety but not sure why, or if you're struggling with loss and looking for solace, Anxiety: The Missing Stage of Grief offers help and answers. As grief expert Claire Bidwell Smith discovered in her own life—and in her practice with her therapy clients—significant loss and unresolved grief are primary underpinnings of anxiety. Using research and real life stories, Smith breaks down the physiology of anxiety, providing a concrete explanation that will help you heal. Starting with the basics questions—“What is anxiety?” and “What is grief?” and moving to concrete approaches such as making amends, taking charge, and retraining your brain, Anxiety takes a big step beyond Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's widely accepted five stages to unpack everything from our age-old fears about mortality to the bare vulnerability a loss can make us feel. With concrete tools and coping strategies for panic attacks, getting a handle on anxious thoughts, and more, Smith bridges these two emotions in a way that is deeply empathetic and profoundly practical.




Dying to Be Me


Book Description

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! "I had the choice to come back ... or not. I chose to return when I realized that 'heaven' is a state, not a place" In this truly inspirational memoir, Anita Moorjani relates how, after fighting cancer for almost four years, her body began shutting down—overwhelmed by the malignant cells spreading throughout her system. As her organs failed, she entered into an extraordinary near-death experience where she realized her inherent worth . . . and the actual cause of her disease. Upon regaining consciousness, Anita found that her condition had improved so rapidly that she was released from the hospital within weeks—without a trace of cancer in her body! Within this enhanced e-book, Anita recounts—in words and on video—stories of her childhood in Hong Kong, her challenge to establish her career and find true love, as well as how she eventually ended up in that hospital bed where she defied all medical knowledge. In "Dying to Be Me," Anita Freely shares all she has learned about illness, healing, fear, "being love," and the true magnificence of each and every human being!




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