An Audioprocessing Story

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(Disclaimer: Since you don’t know me personally, I want to be clear: I am pro-mask wearing. When I mention masks making communication more difficult for deaf and hard of hearing people, my message is not to stop wearing them. There is still a pandemic. Wear them. BUT, it is still true they can make communication difficult. Be ready to write, or use your phone. Maybe even learn a little ASL. And for the love of whatever is holy to you, don’t get pissy if you have to actually try. It’s a lot harder for them than it is for you.)

“(Garbled sounds)?"

"What?"

"(The same sounds, but with a few words added in)?" I still can't understand what they are asking me.

"Sorry?" I can tell they are starting to get annoyed. I feel the anxiety starting to race in my brain.

"Coulju bring me (garbled)ee?" I know they want me to bring them something, but for the life of me, I can't even guess what. So many things have that long "e" sound. I brace myself, for the loud, slow speech. I try to remind myself that they aren't mad at me, and they don't think I'm stupid. It doesn't work.

"COULD YOU...BRING ME...THE BRIE?"

"Oh! Sure!" I go into the cheese drawer in the fridge and dig out the brie, only to be met by exasperation.

"No! The TEA. The PIT-CHER of TEA." Are they just saying pitcher now to help me distinguish the words, or have they been saying it the whole time and I just haven't been picking up on it? Both options are equally possible.

I have conversations like this at least three times a week. The more I am in a busy environment, the more it happens, but it can also happen outside noisy spaces. If someone wants to talk to me directly, I often have to lean in uncomfortably close to understand them. And the question: "What?" at this point feels like a new form of punctuation. However, to the surprise of many, I aced my first hearing test looking into this. Months later, I learned that this was because I do not, in fact, have hearing loss. I have auditory processing disorder.

Auditory Processing Disorder can look like hearing loss, but they are not the same. Hearing loss is specifically an inability to hear certain sounds. Someone with auditory processing disorder will hear all of the sounds you would expect of someone else without hearing loss. The problem is in differentiating between similar sounds, especially in loud settings. In my own appointment evaluation, it said that my issue was with "decoding" speech, much like the example of brie vs. tea. There are a few other symptoms: having trouble locating sounds, listening to music and remembering spoken instructions.

My spouse (who I will call M for the sake of privacy) and I really noticed my hearing difficulties in 2020. I remember occasional jokes about it before that, but nothing serious. Apparently I wasn't alone in seeking help with hearing in 2020. Some audiologists say they saw a rise in appointments during the pandemic. If I were to hazard a guess, it would be that a lot of these people were subconsciously lip reading, so they did not know they were hard of hearing until masks made that impossible. Or they had a suspicion, but could make do. Or the masks muffled voices just enough for them to notice they were struggling in situations their peers were not. These are all just guesses though. I have no expertise that would make them valuable in anything beyond casual conjecture, so please, don't quote me in anything important. (After writing the first draft of this post, I found the news story again and the audiologist interviewed attributes the rise in appointments to masks.)

Naturally, when I was struggling to follow conversations, and needed M to repeat themself 5 times every day, our first step was to look for hearing loss. Luckily, there was an audiologist's office within walking distance from my home. I took my hearing test there and aced it with flying colors. It surprised me a little, but I wasn’t upset about it. Just to emphasize how justified my surprise was, when I told my friend that I passed the test their first response was to ask “Are you sure it wasn’t a false positive?” They even told me to go back and do it again, as a joke of course. I feigned indignation, because passing that test wasn’t easy! I really had to focus! I knew that wasn’t really helping my case though, and M and I began to wonder about audio processing instead of hearing loss.

Unfortunately, the office near my home did not specialize in auditory processing disorders. We had to be referred to another office, about an hour’s drive away. When the day came, we left a little early just in case we took a wrong turn. I brought my switch and started Bioshock in the passenger seat. Playing and discussing the game helped the time pass faster.

We arrived a little early. There was not a lot of space inside the office, so checking in and filling out paperwork was done in the car. After that, and a brief wait, I was let in. I understood why they had to stay in the car, but I wished I could bring M with me. Medical appointments are easier when they are there, because they hear and remember verbal directions more accurately than I do.

My anxiety subsided when I met my new audiologist and her intern. Both seemed nice, and even made references to some of the comments I made in the paperwork for my first hearing test. They also got M’s pronouns right without a fuss. The set-up was much like any other hearing test. I wore special headphones in a soundproof room while they were on the other side of a plexiglass wall, administering the test.

We started with a regular hearing test to make sure that passing previously wasn’t a “false positive.” I passed that part with ease, then we moved on to the more specific test. This one...was not easy. It had more emphasis on repeating what you hear. First words were said into each ear separately, then they would interrupt each other. For the next test, common words were said in strange ways. Some syllables were elongated, or mashed up with their neighbors, and the words all had random gaps in them. I thought I did well on that section. After that, words and then sentences were said through white noise. I had some trouble with it, but I muddled through.

There was one question in that part that stood apart from the rest. The word was probably "new" or "mule" I still have no idea which. I could have guessed, but they didn't want me to guess, they wanted me to tell them what I heard...And what I heard was "Mew." I find it unlikely that Pokemon names have been added to that list. I will recommend my audiologist until my dying day because neither she nor her intern laughed.

Then, the last stage. The final boss. This last test simulated talking to someone while at a party. With each question, the volume of the party sound got louder. I was utterly trounced by this one, and I knew it. The imaginary friend in those headphones could have been calling me all kinds of rude names I wouldn’t have known. I was gone, lost in a forest, occasionally relaying some gibberish from the audiology fae to my testers.

The test was over, and my results were ready. My audiologist came back into the room and said “You definitely have auditory processing disorder.” At the time I knew I didn’t perform spectacularly, but I thought if it was a school test I would have at least gotten a C-. Oh, was I mistaken. When I got my evaluation in the mail it revealed I only got half of the questions right!

Well, there it was. Not a surprise, not upsetting, but definitely a relief. It explained so much. I remember looking at my spouse on the way home and realizing “I’m not just an inattentive asshole who needs to listen better.”

“Of course you’re not.” M had been convinced from the beginning that it wasn’t poor character. “You have a disability.”

There were a couple suggestions for how to proceed. There is no cure, but there are a lot of coping mechanisms and treatments that improve communication. She said she knew I could adjust because I had to adapt to succeed as an honor student with undiagnosed dyslexia (that’s a story for another post). Because I work in a school, her top suggestion was a certain kind of hearing aid that can filter out background noise and pick up on the voices closest to you. I had no idea an aid like that existed, and found it really cool. However, I was initially hesitant to get on board with the idea of going through vocational rehabilitation to get a pair for myself. Did I really need one if I didn’t have hearing loss?

Since returning to work in a full school, I have come around to the idea. I am currently in the beginning stages of working with VR. M has been in favor of the idea from the beginning, and has told me that if we have to drive an hour to get them, we will. Overall, diagnosis has improved life. When you become aware of the source of your problem, you can develop better coping strategies. I get much less frustrated when I forget to do something M asked for, or when I remember to do it, but get the steps completely wrong. We also don’t argue about whether I was listening when a request was made anymore. There are still moments when we are talking and not on the same page, but between their verbal dyslexia and my APD that is bound to happen. And now, sometimes when it goes wrong, it’s funny.

At work, it’s still a struggle. Now that I know I process sounds differently, I have become aware of how much more I have to concentrate than my colleagues. It’s no wonder that even though I love what I do, I am exhausted at the end of the day. Even with that extra concentration, I miss out on so much. It’s frustrating when I struggle to understand a teacher or a student I am trying to help, but it’s also very disheartening to not be a part of the “office” banter.

Jokes, side conversations and discussions are great for bonding. My immediate coworkers are more accommodating, because we’re used to each other and one of them is deaf in one ear. But the moment I step out of our homeroom and spend the rest of the day bouncing around the school, I am left behind. I can try asking them to repeat themselves, but most of the time I get a “Nevermind’ and brushed off. Explaining that I have APD to coworkers has a 50%-50% chance of making things better or worse. Some are actually willing to put a little more effort into communication. Others give up faster than they did before they knew. It never stays the same, and I am growing weary of the gamble. I hope hearing aids improve my ability to help my students, but that remains to be seen. I’ll have to give VR a call tomorrow. Wish me luck!

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