The Turned-Up Television
Last Tuesday at the senior centre, Marlene brought in her husband’s brown paper bag. Blood pressure pills, a cholesterol tablet, something for his stomach. But what she really wanted to talk about was the television. “He has it so loud the neighbors can hear the news,” she said, stirring her coffee. “I have to repeat myself three times. He says I’m mumbling.”
I looked at the pill bottles, but I was thinking about her husband’s ears.
We blame the pills first because they are easy to blame. We line them up on the kitchen table like suspects. But sometimes the problem isn’t the medicine cabinet. Sometimes it is the volume knob on the television set, creeping up year by year.
The Word that Went Missing
I know the shape of it because I have watched it happen to friends. It is not like misplacing your keys or forgetting a name at the grocery store. Those things have a different feel.
Hearing loss comes on softer. You are at a restaurant and the room is full of noise. Your friend across the table is talking, and you catch the ends of sentences but not the middle. You nod anyway. You laugh when everyone else laughs. Later, driving home, you cannot remember what the story was about. You think your memory is going.
What actually happened is simpler. Your brain was working so hard to fill in the blanks of what you did not hear that it never got around to saving the memory. I have seen this again and again in my kitchen-table reviews. Someone comes in worried about their mind, and it turns out they have been turning the television up for three years.
Why memory slips after sixtyBefore you change anything, watch the video on memory after sixty.
The Ear Q-Tip Habit
The myth I hear most often is that hearing trouble is just part of getting older, like gray hair, and nothing can be done about it. Or worse, that admitting it means you are getting old.
Here is what actually happens. We start avoiding the loud restaurant. We stop going to the movies because the dialogue is muddy. We sit in the back at church instead of the front. We tell people to speak up, but we do not make the appointment. We clean our ears with cotton swabs, which does not help and often makes things worse, but it feels like doing something.
I have watched friends withdraw from bridge games and potlucks because following the conversation became exhausting. They thought they were protecting themselves from embarrassment. What they were doing was starving their brains of the very thing that keeps memory strong.
What I Told Carol
My sister Carol called from Arizona last month. She had noticed her husband asking “what?” more often. She was worried about his memory.
I gave her the same advice I’d offer a friend across the table, Sunday pill organizer open between us. “Before you worry about his mind,” I said, “get his ears checked. Not because I think he is going deaf. Because hearing is memory. If the sound does not get in, the brain has nothing to remember.”
I told her to write down three times this week when he misheard something. Not to nag him, but to have the facts ready. And I told her to ask their doctor for a referral, or to find someone who does a hearing test after sixty, because what happens at that appointment is simpler than people fear.
The Clinic and the Store
There are two ways to get your hearing checked, and I have used both.
The first is the grocery store pharmacy where they still know me. Some of these places have a little booth or a screening service. It is convenient. You can do it while you are picking up your prescription. It gives you a number, a starting place.
The second is a proper clinic, the kind Dr. Okafor sends her patients to. It takes longer. You sit in a soundproof room that feels like a recording studio. They test tones and words, not just beeps. I prefer this one. It costs more time, but it tells you exactly what you are missing and why.
I made the mistake once of waiting with a friend. I will not do it again.
She was a retired teacher, sharp as anyone I know. She started missing appointments, forgetting conversations. Her daughter thought dementia. I watched her pull away from the Friday lunch group because she could not follow the talk across the table.
By the time she finally had her ears checked, she had lost two years of connection. Two years of thinking her mind was failing when it was her ears. She got help, and she is back at the lunch table now, but those were two years she did not need to lose. That is the cost.
Here is what I do now, for myself and for the people who bring me their brown bags. I keep a paper calendar by the telephone. When I notice I am asking someone to repeat themselves, I write it down. Not every time. Just when it surprises me.
If it happens twice in a week, I mark the calendar again. If I see three marks in a month, I make the call. I do not wait for the big moment of misunderstanding at a family dinner. I trust the small notes on the calendar more than I trust my own pride.
If you are noticing the television creeping up, or if you are working too hard to follow the conversation at dinner, do not wait. Go watch the long-form explainer video before you change anything in your medicine cabinet or your daily routine. Sit through it and learn what is usually behind these slips after sixty, and what you can do about it. It might save you from blaming your memory for what your ears are doing.