People with hearing loss are concerned with lots of issues, from “Why doesn’t my health insurance cover hearing aids?” to “How will my hearing loss affect my employment?” to “How do I learn to enjoy social activities again?” You’ll eventually confront these and many other issues. If you’ve got lots of time and want to become familiar with many of these issues, you can brew a fresh pot and visit our Issues page (I’ll give you the link later ;-).
But I’d suggest that you limit your inquiry to just a couple of the most immediate issues for now. Your most immediate concern may be the effect your hearing loss has had on your formerly cheery personality. You may be beating yourself over the head because you can’t shake this depression. We don’t have any magic cures, but it may help you to know that what you’re experiencing is normal, and that you will become better at coping with your hearing loss. Explore these concepts on our Psychology of Hearing Loss page.
A close second in terms of immediacy may be the effect your hearing loss is having on your family, particularly your spouse. You may be surprised to learn that some of your marital issues are a direct result of your hearing loss. Check out our hearing loss and family members page for more about what might be going on here and what you can do about it.
The third issue you may want to address now is oral communications. It’s really hard, right? Wears you out? That hearing loss impacts oral communications is pretty obvious; how it happens and what you can do about it are less clear. Here are some thoughts on what you can do to improve oral communications.
OK, want to look at some more issues? I’m betting you want to move on to “What Can I Do About My Hearing Loss?”, but you can check out more issues on our Issues page.
