Sarah

Here’s your regular reminder that the inner ear has more organs for balance (5) than it has for hearing (only 1).

Note: this time is in PST because #AAAConf23 is in Seattle.

I haven’t been active on Twitter lately because my time has been needed attending to family needs this year. But I’m super excited to be presenting on this panel at #AAAConf23! My contribution will be discussing my perspective on audism as a deaf audiologist. Come and see!

@mchua Something similar was true for me. I loved learning and was intrinsically motivated by curiosity. But I was also afraid that I’d never get out of the area where I grew up if I wasn’t always at the top of my class and the best at all academic subjects.

Thread. I was a "good" and "smart" kid partly because I was an intrinsically motivated geek who really did love science and writing, AND also scared I would lose All The Things if I was not Extremely Good At School.

I’ve had similar experiences.

The past 11 weeks have been an absolute nightmare for us both. But now, we can start working on our new normal. So, I’m around again. :)

Highly stressful for us both. He had recovered partially on the steroid treatment he was given, but then he relapsed. After plasmapheresis and chemo, he recovered. Still had foot drops and needed his feet casted for several days. Will have mobility issues for a while.

Back to Twitter again after another long absence. Being a caregiver when one’s spouse has a rare disease is exhausting. As of yesterday, he’s home after 9 weeks in a regular hospital + 2 weeks in a rehab hospital. Overjoyed that he’s home, but we are both still recovering.

@leahcaitrin @AWetmur @LealaHolcomb I discuss this all the time. It’s a great example of correlation not meaning that X causes Y. Deafness itself doesn’t cause balance problems. But there are times when the cause of one is also the cause of the other.

@leahcaitrin @AWetmur @LealaHolcomb It’s not deaf = clumsy or deaf causes clumsiness. It’s that certain causes of deafness are *also* causes of dysfunction for the inner ear’s vestibular system. Depending on the cause of deafness, a DHH person may also have vestibular dysfunction.

@jmhenner I’m sorry! The Sumo was a good hearing aid.

@sarahlovesears RIP oticon sumo. You deserved better.

The audiologist? The place that made me get an entirely new hearing aid for two grand that worked worse than my favorite hearing aid because it was too old to repair at 5 years? These are the folk we’re stanning right now? I mean i tolerate them but…

@jmhenner Starkey has an all-make service where devices from many different manufacturers can be sent for repair. Ask your audiologist about an all-make repair. I’ve sent hearing aids much older than 5 years! After a certain point, they can’t be repaired anymore. But 5 years should be fine

@jmhenner Suggestion for what to do if your audiologist says that your HA can’t be repaired after 5 years: it’s true that the manufacturers won’t repair them out of warranty after a certain period, and we can’t control that. But what we *can* do is send the HA for an all-make repair…

@dmulvany Had we not been in the worst part of the COVID pandemic at the time, I would’ve had more ability to investigate fully what they were doing. I regret deeply that I didn’t dig deeper back then.

@dmulvany During his 2020 hospitalization, they did do an MRI, CT, EEG, and some blood panels. And they said they did their due diligence. I shouldn’t have believed that at the time. Back then, they had considered a lumbar puncture but didn’t do it. And there wasn’t as much bloodwork.

A bit outside of my usual tweet content. My family has been living a nightmare for the past three weeks, and I’m going to share a little about it. Important issue to discuss, in my opinion. My spouse was recently diagnosed with a rare disease. Lots of medical gaslighting.

@TheVintageReylo @naomicaselli Yes, that’s how it’s supposed to be. If there’s ever any doubt about which ear a sound was heard in, audiologists have a way of knowing.

@sarahlovesears @naomicaselli Yes, I find it confusing because with my routine audiologist-run hearing tests they test both ears, and I'm simply supposed to indicate that I hear it, and then they test each individually. The more simple screenings seem like they can be done very poorly.

@elotonvarvas @Babe_of_Swolls @naomicaselli People get hearing screenings at schools and in their physicians’ offices to see if they need a referral to an audiologist. Even the “hearing test” people get at their primary care isn’t a full hearing test. It’s a screening to identify if further testing is needed.

@elotonvarvas @Babe_of_Swolls @naomicaselli What you get is most likely a comprehensive exam, not a screening. Screenings are meant to identify “normal” vs. “needs further testing.” If someone uses HAs already, they are already known to need further testing and they get it from an audiologist.

@CassandraNoCov @naomicaselli From an acoustics perspective, it’s not possible for a 20 dB sound to be put in the right ear through headphones and the child to hear it in the left. Depending on the headphones, sound would have to be at least 40 dB for crossover to happen, and they’d refer at that point anyway

@CassandraNoCov @naomicaselli In a situation where a child actually does have asymmetric hearing, the sound on one side has to reach a certain loudness level for it to cross over and be heard in the other ear.