Dementia and Hearing Loss

I’ve recently learned two things by clicking around the Internet: that more than 40% of people over age 65 suffer from hearing loss, and that there’s a lot of new thinking going into hearing aids these days. The folks at Zounds Hearing Aids, for example, offer some revolutionary technology that seems to answer most of the objections raised against traditional hearing aids.

What does this have to do with family caregiving?

Well, my wife and I took care of my Mom for two and a half years. During that time, her condition deteriorated steadily–her heart arhythmia worsened; her dementia progressed; her mobility decreased. We monitored these conditions closely and did our best to follow the instructions we got from her doctors. We didn’t really consider, however, that we may have been in a better position than the doctors to notice some medical issues.

One of those was her hearing. When I remember her time with us now, I wonder more and more about hearing loss. We weren’t looking for it because hearing loss was my Dad’s issue. From the time he was in his 40’s Dad relied on Mom to tell him what people were saying.

Late in life Dad got hearing aids, but he never ceased to be at war with them. He had a litany of complaints: his hearing aids were expensive because they had to be custom molded, but they were uncomfortable anyway; they were hard to adjust; they were no good in crowds because they amplified everything; the volume level was never right, and they were forever squealing with feedback; worst of all, they would often go dead because the batteries needed to be changed. Dad tried—more or less—to be a good sport about the hearing aids, but he was never satisfied with them.

After Dad was gone, we found it very easy to stop thinking about hearing loss and hearing aids. We thought hearing loss was Dad’s problem alone, and Dad had convinced us that hearing aids weren’t much of a solution. Whenever Mom didn’t answer us or whenever her answers made no sense, we assumed her problem was dementia. We would try to make our questions simpler, but that usually included speaking more slowly and clearly and at a higher volume–just the way we used to speak to Dad.

We were making two key assumptions: that Mom’s own hearing was fine, although she was in her mid-80’s, and that we knew all about hearing aids. No one ever tested Mom’s hearing, so we really don’t know if she had sustained hearing loss or not. We really didn’t know anything about hearing aids except what Dad said.

We thought Mom didn’t listen to us because of her dementia, but maybe she just couldn’t hear us. If Mom were with us again, I think I’d urge her to get her hearing tested.

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