Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!think.com!yale!bunker!hcap!hnews!300!14!James.Womack
From: James.Womack@f14.n300.z1.fidonet.org (James Womack)
Newsgroups: misc.handicap
Subject: Re: HEARING IMPAIRED
Message-ID: <15927@bunker.UUCP>
Date: 27 Nov 90 21:48:06 GMT
Sender: wtm@bunker.UUCP
Reply-To: James.Womack@f14.n300.z1.fidonet.org
Distribution: misc
Organization: FidoNet node 1:300/14 - The Emerald Isle, Tucson AZ
Lines: 36
Approved: wtm@bunker.UUCP

Index Number: 12014

[This is from the Silent Talk Conference]

Lee, deafness is more than clinical. It is an attitude as well. You 
have hard of hearing people who attended institutions for the deaf 
so are very much involved with deaf culture and/or the deaf community. 
So they will look at themselves as "deaf" inthe social sense of the 
word. This despite the fact that they maynot be totally deaf. On theopposite 
coin, you can have a profoundly dea person with a strongly oral background 
or one who has not been able to cope with the fact that he or she is 
deaf. Their mindset would not allow them to label themselves as deaf 
though they would be in the clinical sense.
 
I don't how your daughter sees herself or other deaf people. As for 
the hearing aids and worsened hearing loss don't be surprised. A hearing 
aid ( I will not doubt get lots of flak for this) is basically an amplifying 
device. It is little different from a loud speaker on a boom box or 
other amplifier. With most deaf people, the outer and middle ear function 
just fine. It is usually the inner ear, specifically the organ of corti 
located inside the cochlea that is the problem. Hence the problem is 
neural and not mechanical. Yet an hearing aid by its nature as an amplifier 
forces the mechanical segments of the ear to work harder. Its like 
having having a mouth inside the ear shouting. The mechanicl parts 
the wear out sooner or later. Theodd thing is that hearing aid is directing 
its energy atthe very part of the ear that doesn't need the help.
 
Until the cochlear implant, there was no way around this contradiction 
of terms. Still, if a hearing aid helps a person use the residual hearing 
better, they should use the aid because eventually they are going to 
lose the remaining hearing through entrophy anyway. Use it before you 
lose it is what I call it.

--
Uucp: ..!{decvax,oliveb}!bunker!hcap!hnews!300!14!James.Womack
Internet: James.Womack@f14.n300.z1.fidonet.org