I go to restaurants with a lot of trepidation, especially when I’m with people who might not know I have a hearing loss. A lot of questions cross my mind before I even get to the restaurant.

• Will the restaurant be crowded?
• Will we be seated at a table in a particularly noisy part of the restaurant?
• Will others mind if I ask to switch seats so I can hear and see better?
• Will I be able to hear the wait staff?
• Will the restaurant lower the level of the background music if it’s too loud for me to understand others?
• Do I let the other people know I have a hearing loss?
• Should I bring my remote microphone?
• Will I need to bring a battery pack so my remote microphone doesn’t run out of power mid-conversation?

Maybe I should just stay home?.....

I’m in a book club, and everyone in my book club has hearing loss. I’ve introduced them to an app on my phone that provides automatic speech transcription. At our meetings, I pair my phone to a projector using Bluetooth so that we can all see the transcription it provides. It’s sort of like having our own personal CART writer on demand, and a cool way to use the application.

I will use this application when I’m a passive member of the audience at other events, but I feel a little self-conscious doing so. I’m afraid the people around me might think I’m not paying attention and just playing on my phone. Or worse, that the staff will think I’m making a recording of the event.

I used to avoid phone calls on my cell phone because I could not reliably hear well enough to have confidence that I would understand the other person. Instead, I preferred to use my amplified landline phone because I knew I would be able to hear on that phone. Of course, I was limited to making and receiving phone calls at home and couldn’t be mobile like everyone else.

Getting hearing aids that supported using Bluetooth with my cell phone was a really, huge advancement for me. I went from almost not being able to hear on a mobile phone to preferring it over my amplified phone. It’s my go-to phone now because I can hear the person I’m talking to clearly with both ears, and that works very well for me.

When I go to the movies or a theater to see a play, I’ll check the website before leaving to see if they mention if an assistive listening system is available. I know the Americans with Disabilities Act requires public places to have some kind of system, and they usually have an FM system.

Recently, when I arrived at a theater, I asked the ticket taker where I could get the FM receiver. The ticket taker told me to talk to the concession person. The concession person told me to talk to the usher, and the usher sent me back to talk to the concession person. It took a while to find someone who could not only help me but also find the FM receivers. They were in a little box in a closet. Of course, the batteries were dead.

I attend remote meetings regularly. I have to take various actions to hear people better. Sometimes I have to ask them to turn on webcams, get closer to their microphones, and ask for the auto-captions to be turned on. Remote-meeting platforms often provide auto-captioning for people with hearing loss (and others who are having trouble following what is being said).

Unfortunately, in some cases, the captioning on the remote platforms is so mistake-ridden that I just turn them off. Even when there are relatively few mistakes, the distractions they can cause really interfere with my ability to keep up with the conversation.

Imagine a speaker who says the words, “site administrator,” and the captions read “satan administrator.” Even if the captioning software corrects it, the distraction created by the error, and the visual motion of the correction, can really impact my ability to follow the conversation.

I meet with both customers and co-workers from home and spend a lot of time online in virtual meetings on videoconferencing software. It’s amazing to be able to look right at the person who’s talking and be able to both hear and lip-read them. The difference is like night and day.  It's so much easier for me to understand people, compared to being in the same room, halfway down a meeting table from the speaker, with a loud HVAC system humming in the background.

One thing that caught me by surprise is what happens when a person is talking with a brightly-lit window behind them. Wow. Their features disappear entirely; lip-reading becomes impossible! I’ve had to ask people to swivel their laptops around so the window is not right behind them. It feels a little awkward, but the difference to me, in terms of hearing, is huge.

We all hope to emerge from Zoom soon and attend more events in public venues. These events add so much to my quality of life, but public spaces are the perfect storm for hearing challenges even with my personal hearing aids - the noise of the crowd, the considerable distance from presenters or the PA speakers, and reverberation.

Just think about all the events you attended in public (pre-covid maybe) and the entertainment and educational value they gave you. It can be a great escape from the news or work and family stress, and it creates lasting memories with family and friends.

When I can't hear at these events, I end up sitting in a large crowd, watching their collective reaction to the event and guessing at it. It's like I am behind a glass wall. It’s one of the loneliest feelings in the world to me.