I am on the Board of Trustees of this nationwide organisation which is a combination of two previous well-known help providers…..Hearing Concern, originally known as the British Association for the Hard-of-Hearing clubs, and The Link Organisation which provided residential help by providing intensive courses for those who were suddenly deafened, and their relations.

They have a marvellous website which is well-worth seeing for the helpful, sensible content.

Have a look on the following link……..

www.hearininglink.org

Love this…….

http://funnyoldlife.wordpress.com/2010/06/13/deaf-mugger/

….with thanks to http://funnyoldlife.wordpress.com for letting me know of it.

The link below is to someone who has just gone through the trauma of having a Cochlear implant fitted. The value is that it explains the facts as they appear, and so anyone anticipating having a CI fitted will know what to expect.

.http://funnyoldlife.wordpress.com/2010/03/05/r-e-c-o-v-e-r-y/#comments

I have since been informed about the site below where you can ask questions about Cochlear Implants…..

http://www.hearingjourney.com/forum

I will be adding contact links here, so if you know of any others we have missed, please let us know…..

http://www.hearingconcernlink.org

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/Hearing-Concern-LINK/121712454522979?ref=ts

http://northernacoustics.wordpress.com

If you would like to be informed of some of these, please put a comment, and I can give you some contacts

Despite the continuing symptoms he returned to take the service. As he said goodbye to the last of his parishioners on the Sunday morning ,he spoke with his Session Clerk.

‘You know, it was really odd this morning. My voice still sounds funny, and I could hardly hear myself speak, especially at the sermon’.

‘Man, you were lucky’ replied the Clerk, before realising what he had just said!

I attended on Sunday evening, with some of  our family, the Service of Lessons and Carols at our Church, which is St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral in Glasgow.

It is a beautiful building full of light and was well-filled on what turned-out to be the worse evening we have had this year, snow-wise.

It started with the traditional solo from the front, of the first verse of  ’Once in royal David’s city’. Then followed the various Lessons interspersed with Choir, and Congregational, carols and hymns. Some were well-known, some rarely sung, some completely unknown. Amongst them were  tradional Icelandic and Dominican carols; the famous ‘In the bleak mid-winter’ set by Harold Darke; and a  children’s favourite, ‘Little lamb who made Thee?’

We finished with ‘O come, all ye faithful’, and it was only then that I realised the enormity of wealth of music and words I had been able to hear, understand, and appreciate.

I know that there were many there who would use the loop with their hearing-aids, but there would probably also have been some, with no usable hearing, and to whom much of this wonderful sound might  have been meaningless.

Very sad! Roll-on gene therapy and hair-cell replacement to allow at least the future generations join in the wealth of music which many of us currently enjoy.

On another blog, I spoke at the beginning of this year on the silence in our Cathedral on Christmas Eve, when the choir had finished singing their anthem, the lights were dimmed right down, and only the flickering light of candles around the windows ‘disturbed’ the silence and darkness.

I have never experienced such a strange deprivation of sound which lasted for over 30 secs, and it set me to thinking what those who have been suddenly-deafened, experience.

I have spent over 30 years working in the world of the hard-of-hearing, and the deaf and deafened. I have endeavoured to release them from this non-desired silence and have often had to encourage and cajole them as they returned to a world of noise.

But I have never been able to get inside the head or mind of someone who has been suddenly afflicted with total deafness. For those of us who have been fortunate enough to enjoy the facility of sound all our lives I would like to hear some observations from those who have lost the sense.

Fear, terror, self-pity, aggression against those who seek to enter that world, but can’t, frustration, acceptance, re-adjustment…all of these must feature….so if anyone wants to comment and let us into this world, please do so.

A few years ago, a lovely lady turned-up at our practice, and asked to see me, as a friend had suggested that we would be sympathetic to her. She was ushered to my office and after a few pleasantries, I asked how I could help.

‘I’ve come to get a free hearing-aid’, she said.

‘Who told you that we can provide this?’ I asked, somewhat flummoxed and querying her sanity.

‘A good friend, and a number of her family, have already been to see you’, she quietly said.

I was thinking around all those who might have told her this, but her sincerity told me that this gift was something she believed she could have.

She obviously was not prepared to divulge her friend’s name, but was able to tell me the town from which both came.

Then like a flash, it all fitted together. In that town I had worked with some seven members of an extended family, and had fitted a number with hearing aids.

It turned out that her friend had told her that I had supplied THREE hearing aids, but she had heard it as FREE hearing aids!

Audiometric testing proved what I had just witnessed…a simple mis-understanding. We both laughed over this and she was ultimately fitted with a better aid than the one she had previously!

It’s easy to say that ‘I just remember it!’

But the interesting thing is that, for music at least, you have to hear perhaps thousands of sounds, store them somewhere, recall them, and then perform them exactly.

It all has to come into your ears, be analysed, coded and stored in some memory cells. Then on request, this memory bank has to be opened, and the aural information trotted-out in exact order for it to make sense.

Now does that make you respect the ear and auditory system a little more?

It certainly should!