5 ms·

Yep, I've had this problem forever. Close relatives think I'm deaf before I can't understand them when there's a lot of ambient noise or they aren't speaking c

Yep, I've had this problem forever. Close relatives think I'm deaf before I can't understand them when there's a lot of ambient noise or they aren't speaking clearly, even though I can hear everything else just fine (and have always been very protective of my hearing). There's apparently no way I can convince them otherwise. In American culture, if you can't easily understand people speaking in a whisper in an extremely loud bar, then you're assumed to be hard of hearing.

oldmanjay 10y ago
The article puts forth that an inability to distinguish conversation in a loud bar is hearing loss, so blaming American culture for your medical issue is a bit strange.
dghughes 10y ago
Hearing loss can start with the inability to hear consonants in words. My mother has it but won't get it checked and won't get a hearing aid. The slightest bit of noise to her is like the world is roaring and we are all mumbling. I also worked with a guy who had almost no hearing in one ear and he was similar where any bit of noise and that was it he was gone no longer able to hear. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2787079/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2787079/ I have experience the other way I worked evening shifts in a casino and I learned to hear through noise through crowds and could understand a person. I could hear someone ten feet away in a roaring crowd most times I could tell they were looking for help but I could hear them too.
- Grishnakh 10y ago
  Noise doesn't bother me, I just can't understand spoken speech if there's too much of it. It's always been this way, so I'm getting really sick and tired of all the assholes telling me I'm developing hearing loss. I've always been able to hear CRT monitors at a long distance, which most "normal" people can't. If you can't hear 15.75kHz, as far as I'm concerned, you're the one who's deaf.
  - dghughes 10y ago
    That doesn't matter if you can hear the the whine of a CRT you can have hearing loss in a specific frequency. We all have hearing loss as adults just past our teens we all lose the low 20Hz end and the high 20KHz end of our hearing that's normal. My mother said as a teenager she listened to her transistor by holding it against her left ear. Now she can't hear high sounds out of her left ear but she can hear mid range and low range sounds perfectly. I don't think anyone is trying to be an asshole. It's strange how we as a society can't say to a person you may have hearing loss but we can say to a person your eyes are bad maybe you need glasses.
antod 10y ago
I have this problem too, and it's one of the main reasons I now hate going to bars. If I'm in a group of people having a conversation I end up standing around concentrating hard to grasp a tiny percentage of what's going on (usually too late to chime in) by bad lip reading. Lots of nodding and flubbing and feeling stupid when someone asks me something. Mostly I just hear what could be described as loud crackly distortion - not fun. I can hear just fine without that background noise though. The ambient noise doesn't even have to be that loud either.

oldmanjay 10y ago

The article puts forth that an inability to distinguish conversation in a loud bar is hearing loss, so blaming American culture for your medical issue is a bit strange.

dghughes 10y ago

Hearing loss can start with the inability to hear consonants in words. My mother has it but won't get it checked and won't get a hearing aid. The slightest bit of noise to her is like the world is roaring and we are all mumbling. I also worked with a guy who had almost no hearing in one ear and he was similar where any bit of noise and that was it he was gone no longer able to hear. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2787079/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2787079/ I have experience the other way I worked evening shifts in a casino and I learned to hear through noise through crowds and could understand a person. I could hear someone ten feet away in a roaring crowd most times I could tell they were looking for help but I could hear them too.

Grishnakh 10y ago
Noise doesn't bother me, I just can't understand spoken speech if there's too much of it. It's always been this way, so I'm getting really sick and tired of all the assholes telling me I'm developing hearing loss. I've always been able to hear CRT monitors at a long distance, which most "normal" people can't. If you can't hear 15.75kHz, as far as I'm concerned, you're the one who's deaf.
- dghughes 10y ago
  That doesn't matter if you can hear the the whine of a CRT you can have hearing loss in a specific frequency. We all have hearing loss as adults just past our teens we all lose the low 20Hz end and the high 20KHz end of our hearing that's normal. My mother said as a teenager she listened to her transistor by holding it against her left ear. Now she can't hear high sounds out of her left ear but she can hear mid range and low range sounds perfectly. I don't think anyone is trying to be an asshole. It's strange how we as a society can't say to a person you may have hearing loss but we can say to a person your eyes are bad maybe you need glasses.

antod 10y ago

I have this problem too, and it's one of the main reasons I now hate going to bars. If I'm in a group of people having a conversation I end up standing around concentrating hard to grasp a tiny percentage of what's going on (usually too late to chime in) by bad lip reading. Lots of nodding and flubbing and feeling stupid when someone asks me something. Mostly I just hear what could be described as loud crackly distortion - not fun. I can hear just fine without that background noise though. The ambient noise doesn't even have to be that loud either.