Local support group helps the hard of hearing
By Elizabeth Sias
When Jim Donahue was still in grade school, he lost complete hearing in his left ear. Within a few years, the hearing remaining in his right ear was down to about 3 percent.
At Self Help for the Hard of Hearing (SHHH), he and others with hearing loss are encouraged to share their stories during monthly meetings, where they also gain valuable support and information.
Donahue helped found the group about six years ago, when he and others started meeting casually to discuss issues related to hearing loss and help one another. Now the group meets the fourth Thursday of every month at 10 a.m. in Room 1 at Cambridge City Hall. Their next meeting, free and open to the public, is Jan. 26 at 10 a.m. at Ashland Place Apartments in Cambridge.
When Donahue, 80, was growing up, he developed a mastoid infection, an infection of the portion of the temporal bone of the skull that is behind the ear.
Today, penicillin is effective against mastoiditis, but Donahue was born before the drug was invented. When he was growing up, if the mastoids became infected, it created a painful infection that some children died of.
“When I went to school, I had mastoids in both ears. What would happen is the mastoid would create an infection that would generate discharges of blood and puss,” he said. “That would run down my neck, so it was visible to the other students in the one-room schoolhouse.”
Donahue lost hearing completely in his left ear in grade school, and within a few years, his right ear had only about 3 percent hearing remaining. With a hearing aid he uses today, that increases to 10 or 15 percent hearing “on a good day,” Donahue said.
One of his cousins also had the infection, and both he and she were classified as “dumb” because she had received brain damage from the infection. His cousin recited daily in front of the class, and she was scared of the teacher because the teacher would beat her with her pointer.
“The other kids would laugh at her, and we had this stigma of having something the matter with our heads,” Donahue said. “I took it pretty seriously, and I made up my mind I’d leave the farm when I could, and I would go to college, and I would go on to theological seminary and become a minister, and I became a New Testament scholar.”
Many people today are unaware of mastoid infections because of the availability of antibiotics for ear infections for infants.
Donahue’s is just one of the many stories people share during SHHH meetings, which exist not only to educate, but for those with hearing loss to bond.
“We sit around tables and share these experiences of their childhood or their middle life, and they support each other because now we have a subculture,” Donahue said. “In that subculture, they bond with somebody that’s like themselves, so they don’t feel like they’re the only one in the world.”
They try to focus on a different topic at each meeting. Sometimes they’ll talk about various types or brands of hearing aids and their experiences with those. For several meetings last year, Donahue said they discussed challenges they face with hearing loss.
He sometimes invites an audiologist to speak about a hearing aid product, but he stressed that the guests attend to inform and not to sell or advertise their product. One audiologist occasionally attends meetings and cleans everyone’s hearing aid, Donahue said.
Other times they’ll provide demonstrations. For instance, a member of the group created a device to help him hear in the car. His wife wears a mini microphone around her neck, while he wears a hearing aid around his ear. That way, he can hear her even if she’s sitting in the back seat while he’s driving.
“These are the things we can help each other with. This is a time we come together and we share the things we’ve learned and discuss challenges,” Donahue said. “If we can make hearing better, we raise the quality of life.”
Self Help for the Hard of Hearing meets the fourth Thursday of the month. Their next meeting is 10 a.m. on Jan. 26 at Ashland Place Apartments. Regularly scheduled meetings after January take place in Cambridge City Hall in Room 1.
