Welcome NoMoreRedail ! Just thought I might add my two cents to you mother's situation. Some things which may be helpful to your mother:
1. She may be embarrassed to tell anyone she is hard of hearing. You may tell her for me---- they already know! You can't "fake" for too long. She probably has been really quiet and maybe even withdrawn at times because she didn't know what was going on. She probably makes "mistakes" and asks or answers questions in strange ways, because she misunderstood what people were saying. She probably either talks too loudly, softly or maybe even a lot if she's brave (if you are talking you don't have to listen.) People are probably repeating themselves, talking louder or she's getting the "it's not important" or "nevermind" etc. People know.
2. She may be embarrassed because she thinks people will think she's getting old. Well, kids are HOH, and anyway time flys and a lot of her friends may join her- or already have hearing aids. Her friends and family willl appreciate it if she can tolereate the aids. I personally have a love hate relationship with them and anyway, they don't do me a heck of a lot of good- but they may be ust the ticket for her--she'll have to give herself plenty of time to adjust to them- it's not like putting on glasses. Nowadays there are the in the ear and in the canal aids so she won't be stuck with the old harness and wires I had as a kid. Even the behind the ear aids can be unobtrusive ( mine are large and have a boot jack which adds to the weight and size- but I prefer it ---then people know why I haven't responded and they don't think I'm rude.
3. She may want to consider joining what used to be called SHHH (shelf help for HOH, now called Hearing Loss Association of America - she can find a local chapter, most likely http://www.shhh.org/. A really large cross section of HOH join- some with mild hearing loss some by audiometric standards deaf. Many have CI's. A lot of chapters have both day and evening meetings with speakers and discussions and socializing. It may help her to meet some people who have lost or in the process of losing their hearing. Most of these groups, I understand are not sad sack crying in your beer people but folks learning to cope and who have full lives.
4. If her hearing is really lousy she may want to join a late deafened group, if there is one near her. http://www.alda.org/
5.Let her know (if she is deaf rather then HOH) that deaf people do not define themselves by how much they hear- so she doesn't have to worry about "fitting in" (she probably with not have to deal with militane Deaf) . It doesn't really matter what your audiogram looks like. It is what ever you consider yourself- pretty handy. As far as communication it's whatever works. Speech, ASL, pidgin signed English (PSE), SEE (signed Exact English, cued speech,gestures, writing etc.. Deaf people will work with her in whatever way is most comfortable.
Maybe she's doing some of these things already. Depression comes with the hearing loss, so she can consider herself normal if she's feeling depressed and isolated. She will feel a lot better as her anxiety decreases and she "comes clean" with people- as I say they will be thrilled to hear she's taking some action- it will make it eaisier for everyone! It's a process and a drag but tell her to persevere.
Lastly tell her that there are some fantastic helpful CA's out there (I'm sure she'll smile) who will be more then happy to help her with her calls!
I'm brand new to the place.. so Hello.I've been doing the relay thing for about half a year now and I actually like my job quite a bit. I think that puts me in a rather large minority, but I can dig that.I just recently (as of yesterday, as a matter of fact) got my mother set up to make and receive relay calls through her computer. She hasn't spoken on the phone in years because her hearing has been failing her and she's too embarrassed to let anyone she calls know she's hard of hearing.That's all kind of beside the point.Just today I had a caller making multiple legitimate (at least as far as I could tell) calls inquiring about a product at many local (to them) stores and probably 20% - 25% of them hung up as soon as relay was introduced.Even beyond the fact that it's something that will directly impact my mother at some point, it both
