Lip Reading and Coping in Conversation with Damaged Hearing

[Bobbinapples]

Shortly after the incident which permanently damaged my hearing 10 years ago (You can find that story in the "introduce yourself" subforum), I found myself being able to hold conversation without the constant "Repeat that, please" most often if I am able to look at the person's mouth move. If I were to look away for a second some of their words become muffled or completely incomprehensible.

Anyway, so I was just wondering if anyone else has found this as a good coping mechanism for severe cases of T, or any other little tidbits of wisdom on living with hearing loss. I still haven't found a way to fix my own voice volume, I am constantly asked to lower my voice when, to me, it sounds like I am at a pretty typical level. It makes me accidentally run over other people's words in conversation, making me come off as being very rude!

I hope what I've shared here comes to help someone in a similar situation.

 

[rtwombly]

A good friend of mine was a skilled lip reader before becoming severely deaf. She said it was like when she looked at people face-to-face, their volume went up. Her husband, my wife, and myself learned ASL because of her.

 

[April]

@Bobbinapples You are the first person I've found here that has the exact problem I do. If a person turns their head even a little bit I'm unable to decipher the words. I am constantly asking "what?", or cupping my hands behind my ears, and I also have jumped into the middle of a conversation and cut someone else off because I couldn't hear that they were talking and yes, very embarrassing and I know others thought I was rude. Sometimes I ask my friends if I'm talking too loudly as I hear my own voice differently than others. It's a tough perdicament and even after 8 years of dealing with T, HL, and H. Luckily my friends are great and we've had many a laugh together when I responded to something I thought they said, and my response had nothing to do with the actual conversation. I recently started doing pottery again and the noise of the electric wheels is awful, but even though I can't talk to people much its nice to be around a group and be productive and creative.