USA: Seniors Become All Ears On Fighting Hearing Loss

SAN LEANDRO (Tri-Valley Herald), November 12, 2005: Don Jones already has trouble hearing what the actors are saying to each other on the television show "CSI: Miami." When his wife of 56 years, Adelheid, adds her commentary to the mix, forget it. "A lot of times it seems like she's kind of talking to herself, but then she'll say, 'What do you think?'" Jones said, recalling a typical Monday night conversation in the TV room. "When I'm concentrating on something else, it doesn't always register." High tones don't seem to settle down in this jovial 75-year-old man's ear drums, and going to the multiplex is becoming a waste of time. The movies are just too loud to understand. It's been almost a decade since Jones, a resident of Oakland's Dimond district area, went to get his hearing checked, and the experience was so bad that he never came back. But after prodding by his Castro Valley daughter, who works for the Eden Medical Center system, Don and Adelheid Jones ventured to the San Leandro Hospital on Thursday afternoon for a free lesson on methods to treat hearing loss. He left less than two hours later, a little more convinced that he ought to look at getting a hearing aid that works for him. "I might do a little more looking into it," Jones said. Castro Valley audiologist Beth Ehrlich said some people who lose their hearing feel alienated from family and friends. "The one big thing we're concerned about is withdrawal," Ehrlich said. "They feel left out." Experts say every ear's problem has a different best treatment option, some much more optimistic than others, but there is one thing Ehrlich said she can be sure of: She will never run out of patients. The hard-of-hearing elders who now tell their children about the noise of military guns or Hayward's cannery plants will be replaced by new generations of rock concert regulars, blowdryer-equipped hairdressers, iPod fans and cell phone addicts who don't know when to turn down the volume. Damage from heavy and constant noise remains one of the major preventable causes of nerve-related hearing loss, and Ehrlich said when people like Jones feel that the cinema is too loud, sometimes it's better to speak out than to opt out. "Unless we stop letting them do that, they're going to keep doing that," Ehrlich said. "Unless we start writing, complaining, walking out, it's not going to change." By Matt O'Brien, STAFF WRITER Inside Bay Area