Monday, 20 January 2014

Oh, she'll get used to it

That's what they said at the hearing aid clinic where I had taken my mum to have her hearing aid fitted. A complex and intricate task, requiring the input of a number of highly trained professionals, who told me that after perhaps a few initial teething problems, "she'll soon get used to it". But as it turns out, none of it was of any use to her whatsoever. For my mum has severe Alzheimer's, and she can't "get used" to anything anymore.

You and I are capable of learning by experience: what we were told yesterday sinks in and is remembered today. We learn heuristically, that is to say by trial and error, so what was difficult yesterday may be a little easier today, until we have cracked whatever problem it might be, like, say, learning how to place a hearing aid in ones ear and adjusting to the new, enhanced sound. We will notice how our own voice is changed when the hearing aid is in place; it seems odd at first, like hearing ones self played back by a tape recorder. "Surely that isn't me!" we say, though we get used to it in time.

People with memory loss don't get used to anything. They arrive in each moment unencumbered by the experience of the recent past, so learning is impossible. They can't adjust, assimilate, or any of the other things the technicians at the clinic assumed, in their ignorance, would allow her to get used to her new hearing aid. So my mum cannot and will not ever be able to perform the basic, but to begin with slightly involved process of fitting the aid correctly into the ear, a device so lovingly moulded into an exact analogue of her own ear. Even if someone else performs that task for her, she is disturbed by the new, enhanced sound that we would adjust to in a couple of days at the most.

So when the clinic phoned me today and gave me a follow-up appointment for my mum, I sadly declined and explained my reasons. I'm not sure they completely understood what I was on about, but I hope so. I had to try to help my mum; she's helped me on so many occasions since I was a babe in arms, so it's only right for me to do what I can to help her now. But this, this is a hopeless case and any further intervention could only be seen as a cruelty.

1 comment:

offpat @smile_of_decade said...

99.5% of all our care home clients - including many with far less developed memory function will NOT wear their hearing aids that we have insisted they need -
the shouting in their ears that I am forced to do as a result is not their problem.

It gets really boring when ignorant people cannot see that either,
a) dementia means this is a non starter,
or
b) that frailty and old age means, the combo of discomfort from the device, and lack of interest in hearing what goes on, trumps our desire for them to hear what we have to say.

lack of respect and lack of understanding of the elderly is embedded in our society..