A Little Bit Louder, Please

"If you are going to have a hearing loss, this is the best time to do it," says Char Sivertson, who began to lose her hearing without discernible cause when she was a teenager. Sivertson is downright enthusiastic about things like closed captioning. "It's incredible; now I'm not left out of TV," she says, and ticks off other high-tech advances, such as digital hearing aids and phones that can be "tuned" to improve the clarity of the caller's voice.

But Sivertson, an activist member of the Association of Late-Deafened Adults (ALDA), a support group, wasn't always so gung-ho. "I was in denial for years and years," she says. "I tried to pass for hearing, which was ridiculous." Sivertson was using hearing aids by the age of 24, but it was another 20 years before she fully accepted her fate. And there were some dark days in between. Every few years, her hearing would suddenly get worse. After one such drop, "I was very depressed," says Sivertson, now 57. "I wasn't exactly suicidal, but I was thinking, 'I'm not sure life is going to be very meaningful for me from this point on'."

Sivertson faced a myriad problems while raising her two sons, Dak and Matt. When there was a school matter or some other issue to discuss, her sons tended to bypass her and go to their dad, Larry, who has normal hearing. "Kids don't want to repeat themselves and stuff like that," says Larry Sivertson. "It's up to the hearing spouse to make sure that the person with hearing loss is involved." Char Sivertson found peace of mind through her association with ALDA. Joining such a group, she says, "is the No. 1 thing you can do for yourself" if you develop hearing loss later in life.

And here's something you can do before you reach that point--learn to appreciate what you already have. Says Yale's Rabinowitz: "If you are watching your diet, if you are exercising, then protecting your hearing should be part of your lifestyle." Sounds good to us.

WITH JOSH ULICK, KAREN SPRINGEN AND JULIE SCELFO and GRAPHIC ILLUSTRATIONS BY KEVIN HAND

© 2005