letters to the editor
hearing health foundation
@editor
dear editor: I really enjoyed your Spring 2021 issue on tinnitus and hyperacusis. I have both and it’s a very difficult combination. What bothers me most is that often I need to wear earplugs to muffle noises but then the tinnitus is much more pronounced. It’s also difficult for other people to understand that when they make loud noises like slamming cupboards or banging dishes it can actually be very painful. I appreciate the work you and the people who wrote articles are doing to educate society about these conditions. I will be investigating habituation. Thank you. Joe D. Faithfull California
dear editor: Thank you for all the informative articles. Mostly I love the knowledge gain and feeling united with others out there with whatever form of hearing struggle they face. The poem by Sylvia Byrne Pollack in the Spring 2021 issue touched my heart. Every time I read it I cry, because I understand her struggle through these beautiful words, because they are my struggle too. Angela Schutte New Zealand
dear editor: As a longtime reader and former feature writer for Hearing Health magazine, I have three reasons why I enjoy reading the Spring 2021 issue. The different articles about tinnitus by Steve DiCesare, John Dillard, Jemma-Tiffany Rosewater, and Hazel Goedhart, and also Ankitha Lavi’s ASL lessons provided a nice practical balance of their perspectives. Of course the illustrations by
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hearing health
hhf.org
Ian Miller enhanced the view of DiCesare with humor, hope, and reality. As a postlingually deaf person who has lived with tinnitus since 1989, I’m glad that HHF accepted their stories at face value without challenging, correcting, or rejecting their subjective narratives. Thirty years ago, a tinnitus organization turned down my story that touched on the very same issues brought up by the five writers. My point? Never doubt the sincere subjectivity and suggestions of a genuine tinnitus-enduring person. Lastly, if I may suggest another angle, history is full of creative tinnitus people, such as van Gogh, Beethoven, and Edison, no different from the five writers who shared their empirical insights. Steve C. Baldwin, Ph.D. Austin, Texas
dear editor: I appreciate your articles about noisy healthcare settings (in the Fall 2020 and Fall 2019 magazines). The worst issue is the heart monitor beeps that go off next to the patient’s head. I asked several nurses and doctors as well as management why they couldn’t have the alarm go off at the nurses’ station instead of next to the patient—which doesn’t do so much good anyway because no one heard it except me in the room. Sometimes it would go off every few minutes for hours at a time, at all hours of the day and night, when oxygen levels got below a certain number, or when a tube got blocked. Usually nothing really serious, but it prevented any type of sleep or tranquility. The answer I got was that’s the way the machine is made. It is impossible to change it. There has got to be a better way. Debora Masterson Los Angeles
