Reply to Thinking of buying a megaphone to aim at my mom

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[quote=Anonymous]I went through this for years with my Dad. He just died. He was in the hospital for almost a month before he died and basically needed a family member (mostly me, sigh) in the hospital with him 24/7 to translate. They actually suspended the covid visiting rules for us and in fact they really insisted someone be there. Family members were allowed to take their masks off so my dad could *sort of* understand what was being said to him. It made life so much more difficult than it needed to be in the last month of his life and created some tense moments when he was in pain and I literally resorted to yelling at the top of my lungs so he could hear a little in addition to seeing my lips move. I regret so much of this path he went down.

Like so many APPs have noted, hearing aids are not perfect. Those of us with good hearing think that they're like a pair of glasses - pop them in and, voila, you're hearing problems are solved. They don't work well for people with severe hearing loss so the sooner you address the issue, the better. Also to echo another PP they require lots of fine tuning and adjusting. Older people like my dad who grew up during the depression and WW2 also balk at the cost (I would have mortgaged my home to buy him a good pair, that's how much I wish he'd had a pair for years to get used to and that would have worked better).

One item I wish someone would invent and doesn't seem to exist (except in failed kickstarter campaigns) would be a tablet or something handheld with a bright screen that would basically "close caption" speech - maybe the device could have a paired microphone device that one person could speak directly into so that only the person speaking's words would go across the screen. My Dad was perfectly happy watching closed caption TV and was pretty adept at reading along. I would have paid anything for a device like this over the past few years.

For the past few years his cognitive decline was very noticeable and I definitely chalk that up to him not being able to hear.

OP I don't have much advice for you - this is more for people who have parents in the early stages of hearing loss. But i do send you my sympathies. I regret very much how the last month of my dad's life i spent with him yelling into his face and that we had some tense moments because I got frustrated or because he interpreted my yelling as anger. [/quote]

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