Body changes

It is pretty obvious really. I mean first of all we are born, then we grow bigger and stronger until we reach a point where this stops. From here on although our body size may change little, various bits do begin to wear out. The speed with which this happens is delightfully unpredictable and we have very little control over which bits will wear out first. When we first begin to notice this we might consult with a doctor to establish what is happening to our bodies but there comes a time when the doctor will simply use one of the most upsetting phrases ever spoken...'This is fairly normal for someone of your age'.

One of the most noticeable changes to our bodies that happens as the years pass is the loss of a certain amount of hearing. We can all be grateful for the subtitles that appear on the TV screen when we're watching a foreign film (this is something we take completely for granted until they get the spelling wrong or something gets lost in translation) but to accept the need for them when the actors' words are in our own language, this is a big step to take. One might try to disguise it at first by saying that they are mumbling their words or that their (American?) accents are so strong that it is difficult to make out half of what is being said but gradually there comes a point where the subtitles are switched on for most, if not all, the TV programmes you are watching. The alternative to this, turning up the volume, is likely to be unacceptable to others in the vicinity, those whose younger bodies have yet to change in this way.

Of course there are these things called 'hearing aids', electronic devices that are supposed to improve the quality of one's life by boosting the sound frequencies that one's ears no longer respond to, mostly higher pitched noises. [At this point I did consider adding a picture of some sort to illustrate my text but only an audiologist gets to see inside my ears so instead I have found an appropriate icon.]

Based upon my own experience I can confirm that these gadgets are far from perfect. Go outside on a windy day with a pair of these things in your ears and you almost certainly won't hear the car coming up behind you until it is too late, let alone the voice of the person shouting a warning beside you. Then there is the issue of replacing the tiny batteries every few weeks without dropping the new ones and losing them, again something that can become more difficult as more bits of the body don't function as well as they used to.

Not long ago, however, some very clever person recognised all these problems and made use of some of the artificial intelligence floating around these days to build some more efficient gadgets to stick inside your ears, things that will recognise wind noise, for example, and suppress this particular frequency so the car engine can be heard. A few years ago a device like this might have required you to carry a computer-sized box around with you but thankfully these modern day things are tiny and barely noticeable when worn.

It has, however, taken me several steps to get to the point where I was prepared to try such sophisticated gadgets. One supposedly clever pair of hearing aids that I tried seemed to work fine until I walked past the self service checkout machines at our local supermarket. It appears that these things have cameras focused on you which emit bursts of electronic noise normally inaudible to human ears. The hearing aids did hear it, however, picking it up and passing it through into my ears as a violently loud clicking noise. Even the audiologist couldn't believe this could happen.

STUNT EAR

What I now have sitting quietly behind each ear are things that constantly adjust themselves to the environment they detect around me, mimicking in many ways what my brain once learnt to do. I even had a choice of colours - so naturally I chose silver to blend in with my hair. Wind noise now seems no worse for me than it is for those with younger ears and the devices seem to know when I am in a noisy place with lots of people talking and they do their best to suppress most of the chatter. These things go further, however, in that they use Bluetooth to pair with a mobile phone or a computer so that I can stream music straight into my ears or conduct a phone conversation with someone that only I can hear. This puts me on the same plain as many others in this modern age who walk around with earbuds playing music into their ears from a device hidden elsewhere on the body. Best of all my hearing aids use rechargable batteries which means no more fiddling around with changing the tiny things.

I am not kidding myself. I know my hearing will never again be perfect, no one can expect this. But the improvement once these gadgets are in my ears is both significant and, strangely, hardly noticeable now that I am used to wearing them.