Love, hearing loss and Bluetooth settings
Barry and I were on vacation in the Bahamas, soaking up the sun and enjoying island life until he caught a nasty virus. The next morning, he woke up and said, “I can’t hear out of my right ear.”
Just like that, his hearing was gone.
He saw a doctor on the island who put him on a steroid immediately. Once we got home, he started a series of injections right into his ear to try to restore the hearing. Nothing worked.
🧏🏼 That’s when reality set in
He’d permanently lost the hearing in one ear.
At first, it was just little things. We avoided our favorite restaurants because they were too noisy. Conversations turned into misunderstandings. I’d start to tell a story, then stop halfway through because it was frustrating for both of us when he couldn’t quite catch the details.
Barry, like a lot of people, didn’t want to get a hearing aid. “They make you look old,” he’d say. And I get it, no one wants to feel like they’re falling apart.
But hearing loss doesn’t just affect one person. It changes how we connect with the people we love. We’ve been married 25 years. I wanted us back.
📱 Tech to the rescue
I helped him tweak his iPhone when he first lost his hearing.
- I went into Settings > Accessibility > Audio & Visual > Balance to shift sound to his good ear.
- While there, I turned on LED Flash for Alerts for texts and calls so he wouldn’t miss them.
- I also activated Background Sounds to cut out unwanted chatter.
That really didn’t help much.
What your brain has to do with hearing loss
Last year, my husband Barry lost hearing in one ear because of a virus. Suddenly, we were having issues communicating. I could tell it was impacting Barry so much more than that, though.
The science behind hearing loss