A partner’s view

Tony & Sue Long in woods

Tony Long is married to Sue, who has a profound hearing loss through Meniere’s Disease and relies on lipreading/speechreading to follow what people are saying to her. She wears one hearing aid but it has only a limited benefit.

Tony’s blog is about how Sue’s deafness affects his day to day life as the hearing partner. He offers useful, interesting and thought-provoking insights about how he has learnt to adapt to his wife’s deafness.

Wristbands

So, how was last year for you? The most cheering event of ‘14 for me is simple, and cheap. Even better, it signifies a change in how Sue views her loss of hearing. For years I’d suggested she wear a ‘deaf person badge’, the basic line across an ear. That, I argued, would provide everyone […]

I’m a Swell Guy

Slight pain near a tooth on Thursday turned into agony on Friday night – luckily I have Co-codamol on prescription which helped. Saturday morning I was told I had two large abscesses that had nothing to do with a tooth problem and given antibiotics.

Painting a Gloomy Picture

I’m not commenting on how David Hockney chooses to lead his life. I mean no offence and respect his opinions and his options. I’d heard Hockney speak before of his severe hearing loss and how he struggled to the point of preferring to avoid people.

Apologies to Springsteen

Autumn; Sue’s back at college learning British Sign Language (re-taking level one) and, apart from Bonfire Night, barbeques are in store.We enjoy barbeques, I burn the food and we share the eating. For the first time since Sue lost her hearing we went to a large, social, type of BBQ – the sort where you only know a few people and the eating and drinking lingers past normal bed time. I hadn’t realised the difficulties a deaf person faced at such a gathering.

Rows and arguments

Hearing loss & heated discussions First off, I now know I can reply to comments posted here. I’ll be replying when I know whether I should do that as a blog or directly to the boxes (below left). If anyone wants to comment I’m always pleased to hear from you and shared tips (ideas, not […]

Hero of the hour? Or just a pain in the neck?

Hearing loss and over protectiveness Our confusion over me avoiding someone reminded me of a tremendously heroic incident by me, which ended with me feeling grumpy and somewhat superfluous.

World War One

A guest blog by Tony Long As I write this ceremonies are being held remembering the start of World War 1, I’m not watching because I’d find it too emotional. I often think about the men and women caught up by, and severely affected by WWI and, of course, WWII. How disturbing that mankind had to […]