March 17, 2008--Snowbirding: "What'dya Say?"

My mother, who lives in Lauderhill, broke one of her hearing aides. She’s nearly 100; and though in nearly perfect shape, whenever anything goes wrong, she gets upset. When something as vital as a hearing aide needs repairing, her upset is palpable; and those of us nearby who are devoted to helping to take care of her, leap into action.

To get the hearing aide fixed fell to me.

Ordinarily, getting something repaired for her in not much of a problem. She needs a grab bar installed in her shower—no big deal: call the handyman at her place and one-two-three it gets done. Her washing machine's hot water hose springs a leak—no big deal: call the company with which she has a service contract and one-two-three she has a new hose installed by the end of the day.

But for me, helping with her hearing aide is a big deal. And it’s all personal.

My problem with this began with my father. Like his mother and all his siblings, at about age 70 he began to manifest signs of a serious hearing loss. When we would visit my parents in Florida and watch TV with him, we noticed that between visits he had turned the volume up more and more to the point where it was painful to watch the six o’clock news with him. Not just because we would get into political arguments, but also because the sound itself booming from the set was so loud that it caused migraine headaches.

When I would point this out to him he would vehemently, and at full vocal volume, deny anything was wrong with his hearing or that there had been further deterioration since the last time we saw him. You can only imagine his reaction when we began, quite gently and tentatively, to suggest that it might be a good idea to have his hearing tested.

“I HEAR PERFECTLY WELL. THERE’S NOTHING WRONG WITH MY HEARING. MAYBE A LITTLE EARWAX. NOTHING MORE THAN THAT.” To protect my own hearing I would as subtly as possible slip my fingers in my own ears, knowing that in spite of this that I would have no problem hearing him—he was still coming through loud and clear.

Later, he began to speak in what seemed like non-sequiturs. We would be having a version of a conversation about, say, the arrest and trial of Manuel Noriega, the drug-dealing dictator of Panama; and just as I was concluding what I thought would be a devastating point about how the first President Bush was using his capture and prosecution to prove to the world that he and the United States were not to be pushed around, that we still carried a Big Stick, my father would blurt out, “THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL IN THE WORLD IS RELIGION. TELL ME ONE WAR THAT WASN’T STARTED BECAUSE OF RELIGION. AND FURTHERMORE WHO WAS ALWAYS IN CHARGE? I’LL TELL YOU—MEN. THAT’S WHO.”

Not that these were not good and perhaps valid points, but until we figured out that he engaged us this way—seemingly without any awareness of the context of what anyone was saying—he did this not because he had an emerging case of Alzheimer’s, but rather because he couldn’t hear a word that anyone was saying. And that since he was, in spite of this, eager to participate, he would say whatever might be on his mind.

So, the evidence was clear from the TV volume and the seeming non-seguiturs that he would soon be deaf as a stone, and unless he would somehow manage to agree to get hearing aides we would effectively lose him.

I say “manage to agree” because he was a very stubborn man and if he said he didn’t need hearing aides—even though he couldn’t hear himself say that—there would be no way to convince him to be tested much less fitted for them. And, since he was as vain as any man you can imagine, the thought to him, we knew, that he would be seen wearing these devices, even though they could be made so tiny as to be virtually invisible, was anathema. Forget that he had lost most of his hair, forget that he had a big, rather unattractive indentation in his skull from a cranial operation to drain a subdural hematoma—he still thought hearing aides would make him look like an OLD MAN.

We countered with what we thought would be a winning argument—“How do you think you look when you can’t hear what anyone is saying? Actually, shouting at you. And how do you think you look when you’re in a restaurant and you have to speak at the top of your lungs when trying to hear yourself speak?”

To which he would respond, “WHAT’DYA SAY?”

End of discussion. End of the likelihood that he would agree to have his hearing tested.

But we had one more thing to try. We rolled out our secret weapon.

For whatever inexplicable reason, he had a “special relationship” with Rona. She could at times get through to him and persuade him, if not to do something he was adamantly opposed to doing, to at least try something new. “For me,” she would say. “Why not give it a try.” And when she in private spoke this way with him about his hearing, he emerged from the den with her and an appointment to have his ears tested.

Of course no one reacted to this or ever talked about it. His decision went totally unacknowledged to prevent him from going back on his promise to Rona. We knew how to work around his pride.

So one day, at the appointed time, he disappeared and drove himself over to the Audiologist. He returned, without comment, two hours later with a prescription for hearing aides. Which he promptly filled. They came with the guarantee that he could try them, risk free, for 30 days, and if at that time he wanted to return them he could and would not be charged. This was a perfect way to, as Rona put it, at least “try them.”

Which he did. And as a result, he returned to us and was gleeful that he could join in, and dominate, every subsequent discussion about Manuel Noriega. Who by then was on trial in Miami.

From this experience I came away traumatized about anything having to do with hearing, hearing tests, and, heaven forbid, hearing aides.

In spite of this, when recently my mother needed to be in the hospital and was thus not able on her own to get her hearing aide repaired, I was the most likely candidate to take on the assignment.

But my father had made me so phobic about them that when she handed hers to me it felt as if it were on fire. A hot emotional coal, which I promptly dropped into one of the crevices of her hospital bed. The fifteen minutes it took to find it and then extract it without further damage from the bed’s mechanism didn’t make dealing with it any easier.

After I recovered it and quickly passed it to Rona for safe keeping, and frankly so I wouldn’t have to touch it again, my mother directed me to take it to the place where she had been fitted since she had insurance that would pay for at least some of the repairs, which she anticipated would be quite expensive, considering she had spent thousands of dollars to have them fitted and fabricated. But when we went to her apartment to get the policy we discovered that it had expired two years ago. We knew this would upset my mother since she had enough on her mind and thus decided not to bring it to her attention and to pay for the repairs ourselves. This also freed us from having to drive 30 miles each way to her person and, after the work was completed two weeks later, make another lengthy round trip burning up time and nearly-four-dollar-a-gallon gasoline. If we were going to assume the cost why not make it easier on ourselves and find a place close by right here in Delray Beach?

* * *

Maple’s Hearing Aide Center is located close by us on Linton Avenue. If a place that deals with such things can ever be described as charming this one is it. The Center is housed in a 1930s bungalow which somehow managed to survive numerous hurricanes while fending off plans for its demolition and replacement by yet another gated community. We heard about Maple’s from a Green Owl regular who, ironically, had his own mother’s hearing aides repaired there. Especially down here the world is very small.

He was kind enough to drive us over and introduce us to the eponymous owner, David Maple, a distinguished and charming 40 to 45 year-old. Someone who is the epitome of a blessed person who will never age beyond his prematurely gray hair much less require the use of any of his own devices. Something I used to say about myself.

But here I was, hearing aide in hand. David Maple took it from me, gave it a quick look and, with it, retreated into what had formerly been a back bedroom. We heard him humming while he presumably was checking the extent of the damage, where to send it out for repairs, and of course, which would explain the humming, how much it was going to set me back. Though my own hearing is far from perfect, I thought I heard the sounds of his fingers too eagerly dancing over an adding machine keyboard.

He emerged in less than five minutes and smilingly handed the wounded hearing aide back to me. I heard it whistling.

“How come it’s whistling?” I asked. “Wouldn’t that mean that it’s somehow . . . working?”

“Well, it is,” he said. “All it needed was a new door. Where the battery goes. I happened to have one back there. A new door. I simply popped it in and it’s fixed.”

“Fixed? When I spoke with the person who made them for my mom, she told me it would take at least two weeks to get the work done.” I was bowled over and frankly suspicious. Maybe he had just Scotch taped the old door into place; and after charging us an arm and a leg, it would fall off again from the jostling of the car even before we got to our place. Though we’ve been here for two months now, I still retain much of my New York snowbird skepticism.

“Actually,” he said, ignoring my attitude, “it was quite simple. Pop off the old broken one and pop on the new one. Take a look. It’s all done.”

I was about to say something that could easily have been misinterpreted and Rona, sensing that, jabbed me in the ribs. As she has frequently needed to do whenever someone is uncommonly, to me suspiciously, nice or accommodating. My antenna is always set to high alert.

“What did you say?” I asked David Maple. “Sorry. But my hearing’s not as good as it used to be.” I chuckled, “Actually,” quickly correcting myself, I instead said, “There’s really nothing wrong with my hearing, per se. All I need is to clean out some earwax. I accumulate quite a lot of that.”

“I can take care of that for you if you’d like,” Maple boyishly smiled back at me; and from his jacket pocket extracted an ear probe, the pointy thing that fits into your ear and has a light built in so they can look at your inner ear. And before I could object, he had me bending over and stuck the thing into my left ear. “No, nothing there.”

“You mean I don’t have any wax?”

“Nothing that I can see. But let me check the other one,” my good ear I should add, “Maybe that’s the one causing you the problem. I can clean it right out for . . . Except that one too’s clean as a whistle.”

There went my decade-long explanation of my hearing loss. Which meant . . .

“Do you also do hearing tests?” Rona chimed in. It was now my turn to jab her in her ribs.

“Sure. Right back there.” He pointed to the other former bedroom.

I needed to find a way to wiggle out of what was becoming for me an increasingly complicated situation. Desperate and inspired I said, “You know I should make an appointment to come in to get tested.” We were heading north in a few weeks and knowing how busy fellows like David Maple were I knew the next available appointment would be well after I was safely reensconced in New York.

“As a matter of fact” he now was chirping, “I can do it right now.” I felt myself growing faint. “That is, if you have the time.”

“Well, we do have some chores to do,” I managed to say while gasping for air, I was that traumatized on the subject. “I don’t mind at all,” I lied, “coming back at another time.” But I realized that ploy wasn’t going to work since Rona, having heard that sort of thing from me many times in the past, had already pushed and leveraged me halfway to the testing room.

And before I knew it I was seated next to a table upon which the testing machine sat. It looked more like a World War II code breaking machine, with its antiquated black dials and gauges, than the high-tech torture device that I had been anticipating. And the earphones of the same vintage didn’t help allay my fears of Nazi scientific experiments.

“All you need to do,” he said, “is raise your hand every time you hear the tone. They will progress from louder to softer. It’s very simple. That way I’ll be able to get a picture of your hearing.” I liked that—he could have said “a picture of how deaf you are.” And so I relaxed, or, more honestly, submitted to the inevitable. I had no choice. Maybe I’d manage to do well, considering my ears were clear of wax.

I was happy to notice that he began testing my good ear—it would give me the opportunity to impress him; and sure enough I heard the first few tones loud and clear. And every time I did shot my hand up into the air as I had done in fourth grade to impress Mrs. Gildersleeve.

But after that first burst of euphoria I sat there in increasingly numbing silence, no longer hearing any tones; and with enough time passing I couldn’t pretend there was something wrong with the infernal machine. There was no denying that he must be sending tones my way which I was not hearing. Thus, though the room was warm from lack of air conditioning, I began to shiver and sweat.

After a few minutes I began to hear beeps in my other ear. He had obviously given up on the first one; and even sooner than with the good one, this time silence descended on me almost immediately. I struggled with the earphones, which felt as if they were imbedded in my skull, thinking they must be defective from decrepitude. And glancing over at the machine I assumed it too must have become disabled from age and over use.

He caught my eye and, as if responding to my worried look, jumped up from his chair. Chipper as ever, he clapped his hands and said, “We’re done.” He held the chart he had been writing on pressed close to his chest. From that alone I knew the news certainly was not going to be good. His excessive cheeriness is something I had learned from other doctors was always put on to mask bad test results or news of an incurable illness.

“Let’s go back outside so your wife can hear the results.” He emphasized the “hear” as, I felt, a way to rub in the sad news of my circumstances.

Before I could catch up with him, he was already back in what had been the bungalow’s living room. Rona was seated there reading brochures about hearing aides. Doing a little advanced research, I thought, about my inevitable needs, assuming there were even devices powerful enough to deal with my condition.

“Take a look at this,” he was talking with Rona, ignoring me as if I were merely the source of the interesting data, though I could still hear well enough to make out what he was saying. “This chart that I made, your husband’s Audiometric Evaluation, shows you everything you need to know about his hearing.” I looked over his shoulder to get a glance at what looked like the right side of a Bell Curve. Just the right side in which the curve began at the apex and then descended so rapidly that it quickly dropped right off the chart. I was trembling so much that I needed to find a chair into which to collapse.

He then finally turned to me. I leaned forward and squinted, certain I would need to read his lips. “It’s not what you’re thinking.” I resumed my breathing. “You have what we in the business call Rock and Roll Hearing.”

“What?” I gasped.

“You must have listened to a lot of loud music when you were younger.”

“Actually,” I said, “I’m older than you think. I listened to mainly to Perry Como and Eddie Fisher. All their music was pretty soft. It wouldn’t have made me . . . as deaf as I guess I must be.” I pointed at his graph.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he said reassuringly, “You’re not as hard of hearing as you think.” I continued to point at the chart. “You do have a hearing loss. That’s true. Especially in the higher frequencies. So when you listen to music you probably don’t hear the violins very well.”

I acknowledged that that was true. I would give him that much. “Anything else?” I asked. “I can live with that.”

“That’s true. It’s not fatal.” He laughed at his own joke. “But there is one more thing.”

“Yes?” I said tentatively, thinking also maybe my problem would lead in time, if not immediately, to something more serious than trouble with violins.

“I listened carefully to your wife’s voice.” He saw that I was puzzled. “The tones that make up her voice are largely in the ranges where you have your hearing loses.”

“And?” I still was not getting it.

“That means you may have trouble hearing what she has to say to you.”

“This confirms what I've been saying for years.” It was Rona, and I had no difficulty whatsoever hearing her.

I had no choice then but to ask, “So, what do I . . . I mean what do I . . . I mean . . .

“Well, these hearing aides I was reading about,” it was Rona again, “it sounds as if they could help you to hear those violins he was talking about. And also to hear me.”

There was still a way out of this for me. So I said, “If I agreed to have hearing aides made how long would it take.” Adding before he could answer, “I know you have to make molds, have them fabricated, then there is the fitting.” I remembered this sequence of things from both my father and mother. It would take months and we were remaining in Delray for just weeks.

“In your case, and for the devices Rona has correctly identified as best for you,” she smiled back at him, “it would take . . . let me think . . . maybe two days.”

“Days?” I shrieked. “I thought my mother’s took . . . ”

“For her type, you’re right, all together it would be at least two months. But for these, as I said, no more than two days. So what do you think?”

Rona was nodding her head enthusiastically.

But I had my opening, “Since it takes such a short time, let me think about it for a few days. We have plenty of time for that.” Hoping it would all be forgotten by then. Lost in thoughts about the beach and air and all the other wonderful things we have been experiencing.

David Maple, though, had me. “Here’s the deal—I can get them for you as I said in a day or two, and you can wear them for up to 30 days. If they don’t work for you, bring them back and they cost you nothing.”

Rona’s smile was now capable of competing with the South Florida sun.

With difficulty I raised myself from the chair. “I still need a day to think about this.” Rona was nodding agreement knowing how difficult this was for me—being potentially transformed by hearing aides into and instant Old Man.

Back on my feet, I asked, “So how much do we owe you for fixing my mother’s hearing aide? And of course for the test?”

“Let me see,” he said, scratching his chin. “That’ll be five.”

“Five what?” I asked.

“Dollars,” he said.

“Can’t we pay you more than that? I mean, you even included a new battery for the hearing aide. And gave me the test.”

“No, that’s it.” He set aside my offer with a friendly wave.

He was grinning now. “But when you come back in a day or two, don’t worry, it’ll cost you plenty.”

With that we left but could still hear him laughing to himself as we got into our car.