fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3258 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3258 ⌋

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I just got home from visiting my grandmother, who has gotten very hard of hearing. It has gotten to the point where she can't hear the TV even when the sound is super loud for everyone else and she just sits there at family birthdays nodding along without ever really hearing anything.

So when I was there now, my sister mentioned her maybe trying out some hearing aids, and my grandma got so pissed. I'm sure she's getting tired of us nagging her about it, but now she just got super pissed and mentioned how they don't work for her (apparently you need to wear them for two weeks before her ears are adjusted to them, or something like that, but she has never tried them out for so long before so).

The entire thing is just so frustrating, and what is worse that I'm sure a lot of her memory problems (mostly repeating the same things 10000 times) is due to her not hearing/not being sure people have heard. So I tried to calm her down, asking her if she didn't find it frustrating to never being able to participate in conversations or not being able to watch TV, and how needing a hearing aid wasn't that different from using glasses and that sometimes people need assistance. It won't help though. Nothing will.

And it is just so annoying! And she acknowledges it! Calling it a "family weakness" and repeatedly mentioning how much it helped her own mother to get hearing aids after nagging her to get them back in the day! But she is just too fucking stubborn and proud to actually try her hearing aids out and it makes her seem so much older. I just wish she would try to wear them for those two weeks and see if it helps, and if it doesn't, fine! You've tried! It didn't help, but at least you fucking tried! The entire thing is just so fucking frustrating and has been going on for years and I'm just tired of yelling and repeating myself. I'm sure the entire family are.

tl;dr My grandma is borderline deaf and won't try to do anything about it and it is fucking frustrating.

My mother is like this. After a while we all stopped repeating ourselves.

ayrt
It's really tempting to just do that, but I can't bring myself to do it. I've started to either just ignoring her when she tells the same story for the millionth time or summarising it before she gets the chance to finish it though.

The sad thing is that this entire thing makes me avoid visiting her because I get so frustrated, so outside of birthdays I only see her every few months despite her living a 20 minute walk away from me. I'm sure that's the case for a lot of the family.

The unfortunate truth is that some people can't and do not want to be helped.

ayrt

I think I need to accept this soon.

Get the family to stop catering to her. Turn the tv down whenever you are there, have conversations at normal volume and when she shouts to speak up, ignore her. She'll either have to get her ears seen to or live in the most humiliatingly isolated way possible. Poor grandma, she brings it on herself though.

That sounds awful and yet... yes, I see your point. Getting to whole family in the cruel jig might be tough, though.

ayrt

Yeah, that will just make her isolate herself entirely, even more so than she already is. We honestly mostly "ignore" her at family birthdays already (not willfully, just you know, speaking normally most of the time) so that doesn't really seem to help. When I asked her earlier if she didn't find it frustrating to hear she just joked that "not all conversations are worth listening to", which true enough, but some of them are.

Mean-spirited dickhead.

Maybe she hates your family and she's relieved she doesn't have to pretend to care about your discussions anymore

ayrt
If only! That would be a valid excuse at least. Sadly, I don't think that's the case as she likes to gossip at the few things she has heard when it's just us two together (which gets sort of like a game of telephone due to a bad combination of failing hearing + possible failing memory)

You're a dick.

It sucks getting old.

But on the other hand, you can't change people, especially when they're stubborn as fuck.

That's tough, I'm sorry. It's not uncommon for older people to be stubborn about hearing loss (or loss of eyesight, for that matter) because they don't want to believe it's a problem. It's a shame she's missing out on so much.

Is there a chance a family member could go with her to her doctor and see if the doctor could convince her to try them again? Sometimes an outside authority holds more weight than family.

My father is like this to a lesser degree. He finally got hearing aids, and he'll use them to watch tv, but not when he's on the computer. I visited for Thanksgiving and when he was on youtube I could hear the music from any room in the house.

It's very frustrating (and painful). I sympathize.

Yeah, I can see how that gets really frustrating. I hope she realises that hearing aids will help her out soon.

I just wanted to point out that hearing aids aren't necessarily the be all end all. My grandmother does have hearing aids and she still says that when there are several conversations going on at once like there tend to be at family meetings, she still isn't able to understand. My father and aunt (yay for family weaknesses, looking forward to that one XD) also have hearing aids and there are lots of things they don't hear or understand (though the volume of conversation and TV can luckily be decreased, since that is the kind of thing that hearing aids are mostly aimed at). From what they say, music is not the same and neither are birds.

I just thought I should mention this, since many people seem to think hearing aids magically restore a person's hearing completely. :)

True about music: my father has to take his out when he's practicing the piano or singing in choir.

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