My Grandfather

Imagine sitting at your shabbos table with all of your friends and family around the table. Someone makes a joke, and everybody bursts in to laughter. Yet, the person at the head of the table sits there silently because he cannot hear. This is my grandfather, or pawpaw. My grandfather wears a hearing aid. When I went to Florida for winter vacation, I started asking my grandparents a lot about pawpaw's hearing loss because of my recent knowledge on this topic from psychology class. I learned that my grandfather has sensorineural hearing loss. This is hearing loss caused by damage to the cochlea's receptor cells or to the auditory nerves. Occasionally, disease causes sensorineural hearing loss, but more often biological changes linked with aging and prolonged exposure to ear splitting noise or music that culprits. I learned that my grandfather fought in the Korean War (1950-1953) and the frequent, loud gunshots damaged his cochlea's hair cells. Though I was sad to learn this, I was very pleased when we all went to a movie together and I saw all of the accommodations that are made for the hearing impaired. Listening devices are available at the theater for the hearing impaired, AND there is now a new device where the bottom is put in the cup holder and a black wire juts out with a screen. On the screen, the words of the movie appear. This way my grandfather can read the words and watch the movie at the same time. It was very cool, and he even made a lot of friends because people kept coming up to him and asking him what that weird looking device was!
When I got back home, I researched more on hearing loss caused by war. I found out that hearing loss is now a silent epidemic in U.S. troops. "Hearing damage is the No. 1 disability in the war on terror, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs." The military has responded recently with better and easier-to-use earplugs, greater efforts to educate troops about protecting their hearing, and more testing in the war zone to detect ear injuries. Hopefully through time, this issue will be resolved!