Hi from the Mid-Atlantic area

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Beach girl

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Hi everyone,

I've been reading for a few days, so time to introduce myself. I'm a 60 year old, late deafened woman, now retired from the Foreign Service. I lost my hearing gradually over the last 30 years; hearing loss was accelerated after I lived in Ghana and had to take the anti-malaria medication for two years. I was not aware at the time that a small percentage of people are sensitive to it and hearing loss is a known side-effect. I was one of those few, apparently.

My husband and I spend our time about half and half between the Northern Virginia area and the Outer Banks of North Carolina. I LOVE being retired! Mostly because it gives more time to do things with our two poodles, Casey and Pippin. I do obedience and agility training with Casey, and hope to compete with him in agility. Pippin, about 9 years old, mostly lives a life of leisure, as he is not interested in all that running and jumping required for agility. Lazy thing. :lol:

I use hearing aids in both ears, currently using Phonak Savia Arts. Not really crazy about them, as I find the automatic switching from program to program kind of annoying, especially in the car when I want to listen to the radio. The main program is excellent, but as soon as I start driving, it switches to something else so the radio music and speech then "disappears" into a sort of jumble of background noise.

Eh, maybe time to try something else. Would love to hear recommendations.

I'm also interested in getting advice/opinions on various technologies related to using the phone (I've given up on using phones, which makes me feel quite isolated sometimes), cell phones, internet TV, etc., etc.

Anyway, that's the story of my life. So here I am, saying "hi" to you all.:wave:
 
welcome to AD
for me, I'm getting better with my new purple hearing aid (got Oticon Safari 600s on 3/10) so I used the streamer to talk on my phone since it has bluetooth and listen to my ipod and other audio sources
I also loved the idea of having volume control again since I had an old hearing aid that didn't have one and I had trouble with the speech in the backgroud noise sometimes which almost recived no benefit!!!!

if you're looking into new hearing aids or something, maybe you can stay with Phonak or switch to Oticons :)
 
I'm in the same boat as you when it comes to hearing loss. As I get older, my hearing will progessively deteriorate and I'll eventually become deaf. I'm not going to lie, I'm scared to death for my future but thankfully I am learning ASL so that shouldn't be too much of a problem.
 
Hello! I missed this before. I have a nine year old poodle as well as a pekingese and a shih-tzu.

:welcome:
 
:welcome: to AllDeaf forum. Enjoy reading and posting all the threads here. See you around here. :wave:

Psst, I am 65 years old myself and a Deaf woman. :naughty:
 
:wave:...Welcome Aboard!...I love the state of Virgina and the Outer Banks also (native of N.C.)...I'm late-deafened also, and retired (64 years old)...Glad ur enjoying ur retirement!
 
Why are we telling our ages?? I am the baby of this group of women so far at 54 years old. :P

And I am just Deaf/deaf.
 
Well, I'm glad y'all are telling your ages! Interesting to see what a spread we have. All of us baby boomers, maybe paying the price for hanging out too close to the band back in the '60's and '70's?

Also fun for me to see the dog owners in the group. My main occupation is training my babies; previous pets were trained well enough to be good pets, but this is the first time I've gone further with it, into the agility and advanced obedience classes. Lots of fun, and I never would have had time to do it while I was still working.

Bottesini, is that your real name? Are you Italian? I am too, courtesy of my dad's parents, who emigrated from the Tuscany area, around Lucca, in the early 1900's.

Tbone, you said
I'm scared to death for my future
Click to expand...
. I know what you mean; I was in my early 30's when I started to lose my hearing, and I was scared, too. I wish it hadn't happened. However, since those days, there have been SO many improvements and accommodations. There was no Closed Captioning on all TV shows back then; there is now. There were very few amplified telephones; now there are. I haven't figured out how to use cell phones effectively myself, but I know there is technology I could be using. Hearing aids themselves are so much better now than what they used to be. By nature, I'm an optimist, and I'm sure that as time goes on, there will be more and more improvements in technology that will help. Best thing I can say is find a good audiologist who keeps up to date with the various options. I have had ONE audiologist in my life who was really good at stuff like that. Unfortunately she lives 800 miles away from where I live now, but I still see her from time to time when I go back to my home town.

And despite having a hearing loss, I have friends, I have a dear husband, I have my doggies. I had a good career (although most of that time my hearing was better than it is now; it's only been in the last few years that I gave up on using phones). I've learned several languages (not ASL, though, yet). Life will be as good as you make it, regardless of what happens with your hearing.
 
Beach girl said:
Well, I'm glad y'all are telling your ages! Interesting to see what a spread we have. All of us baby boomers, maybe paying the price for hanging out too close to the band back in the '60's and '70's?

Also fun for me to see the dog owners in the group. My main occupation is training my babies; previous pets were trained well enough to be good pets, but this is the first time I've gone further with it, into the agility and advanced obedience classes. Lots of fun, and I never would have had time to do it while I was still working.

Bottesini, is that your real name? Are you Italian? I am too, courtesy of my dad's parents, who emigrated from the Tuscany area, around Lucca, in the early 1900's.
Click to expand...

I am of mixed ancestry. :)
 
:wave: Beach Girl
I have dogs and work in ob. and agility too:)
also have tried nose work, cart, herding...

hubby and I were in N.C at the Great Smokey Mountains Park - so beautiful!

am in my 30's losing my hearing for unknown reasons
hubby deaf w/o HA's. Born with Rubella Syndrome.
 
Welcome. :)


Beach girl is a nice screen name. :) I used to be a beach girl when I lived in LI.
 
Thank you. I grew up in a town right on Lake Michigan, and now spend summers in the Outer Banks next to those gorgeous beaches, so it suits me.

Dogmom, what kind of dogs do you have? Do you compete in obedience and agility, or just do it for fun? I HOPE to compete with Casey, but he is such a wimp I don't know if his temperament will stand for it. He adores doing agility, though. I have the same instructor for both; she said Casey thinks obedience is "like school, but agility is like recess." So true!
 
:wave:Beach Girl,

I haven't competed in agility as of yet...my very first beloved Rottie - now at the Bridge - was diagnosed with kidney disease at age 2 and therefore our plans with her derailed to accommodate her health issues for about 6 years. She had good life quality for the time that we had together.:aw: and I still love her very much. But anyway, though we tried most of what the breed is for, we didn't do anything seriously or competitively due to her health restrictions. Now with two young Rottie girls, I'm once again planning to compete in agility and hopefully obed, cart, tracking etc. My other dog is a 13 yr. old Lab through rescue <adopted at about 1 and 1/2> ; he's done some agility, tracking and obedience for fun but he ended up with very bad hips discovered on OFAs' at 2 yrs. so we've never competed with him in agility either and he was attacked by a male, smaller dog when I was out walking with him on-leash past a neighbor's yard, the Summer we got him, so for many years he was dog-shy and leash-reactive and so we worked on behavioral issues. The attacking dog actually ran out of a house to us as we passed by on the sidewalk.
so that's a small part of my dog story:)
 
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