So, here it is, I’m about 2 years old and I don’t answer calls from my mom. I distort words. The doctor is not worried, putting this on my character. Yes, I have a strong character but don’t we all when we’re a couple years old!
Yet, my mom insists. She calls for an audio test.
I’ve already lost 40 dB.
Scale of decibels - illustrating levels of sound
dB
Sound example
0
Threshold of hearing
10
Recording studio
20
Whisper
30
Quiet rural setting
40
Quiet living room
50
Suburban residential neighbourhood
60
Normal conversation at 1 to 2m
70
Passenger car
80
Medium truck
90
Heavy truck
100
Jackhammer
110
Rock band
120
747 on take off
130
Threshold of pain
According to the scale above, a 40 dB loss means normal conversations sounded like whispers to the little 2-years old me. That was only the beginning.
Today, I am at -120 dB. This means I will mostly endure pain caused by the sound pressure before I can start hearing anything.
What does it ‘feel’ like to lose hearing?
Let’s take a look at the picture below. Let's say this is what a normal person hears. You can see all the details. What the people are hearing. The leaves on the trees. The fish rod line.
What a normal hearing person would "see"
Naturally, hearing less means less ‘light’, and with this fewer details. Now you can barely see the clothes, the trees’ details, the shape of the boat. You start guessing.
Loosing hearing means loosing details, even if contours remain sharp
We’re in 1980 when I was diagnosed. The doctors knew that my condition would only get worse.
My parents were faced with 2 choices: learn to speak and lip-read and stay in the world of 'hearing people', or learn sign langage which meant communication would mostly be constrained to the community 'talking' the same langage.
As it was explained to my parents, the lip-reading option was much harder and riskier than the other but could reap more benefits on the long term.
Amplifying and racing against time
My parents were up to the lip-reading challenge, and I got hearing aids.
Hearing aids, now and then - Sources: Personal archives, Phonak®
They were much uglier and bigger back at the time.
And they helped a lot.
As I was becoming deaf, we were racing against time. The brain is shaping very fast. The part of the brain assigned to langage shapes until the age of 5 to 8 years. That’s why implanting deaf adults who never heard was a failure. Roughly speaking, in order to be able to listen, the brain needs to know how to decode a sound into a word and then assign a meaning.
I went to the hospital at least once a week to get as much stimulus, so that my brain would acquire as much as it could with the time left.
The hearing aid brings back the light to the picture. But we started to lose details. Because of the microphone’s definition and technology limitations, and because the cells are dying.
Even if they are amplifying, microphone and electronics remove sharpness
And this continues, no matter what we do.
As the hair cells are dying, definition and depth are fading
Until I have to guess what I’m hearing. Would you guess the boat on the lake if you didn't see the picture above?
Take the below picture for example.
You can guess it’s a car. It’s only because you know what a car looks like.
Is it a car?
On the positive side, because of my condition and thanks to my mother’s intuition, doctors started to systematically test infants for hearing deficiencies in the town where I was diagnosed.
