Please Send a Decoder: A Retired Scientist's Experience with Hearing Loss and Tinnitus

By Sylvia Byrne Pollack

I have worn hearing aids since the 1980s but my story begins long before then. In 1945 both my eardrums ruptured. Oral penicillin was not yet available so there I was in the local hospital at age 4, being injected with the “new” antibiotic every four hours. I recovered well enough to flourish at school, albeit always sitting in the front row. I think that is when I began to watch faces closely, to read lips.

Music was an important part of my family’s life. I took piano and flute lessons and sang in the church and school choirs. My hearing was subpar but not enough to keep me from making and enjoying music. I thought I might major in flute in college but before I got that far, Russia launched Sputnik. I changed course, and decided to study science. I earned a B.A. in zoology from Syracuse University, then a Ph.D. in developmental biology from the University of Pennsylvania.

In the following few years, I started a family (two wonderful sons!) and developed a career in cancer research—applying for grants, writing and presenting scientific papers, traveling to meetings, teaching, reviewing grants for the National Institutes of Health. 

But by the time I was 40, I could no longer ignore the effects of my hearing loss. I missed much that was said in noisy lecture halls, and in the restaurants and pubs where some of the most important scientific exchanges took place after the regular sessions ended.

Pollack’s full-length poetry collection, “Risking It,” that has just been published (April 2021) by Red Mountain Press. 

I didn’t hear the beginnings of some sentences or the endings of others. I felt more and more isolated. I thought the problem was me, maybe a personality problem like shyness or fearfulness. At that point in my life, I didn’t appreciate the toll the struggle to hear and understand was taking on me. Years later, I wrote this poem (published in “Clover: A Literary Rag” in 2013): 

Prayer Falling on Deaf Ears

Dear God
Please send a decoder, an angel
with mellifluous voice to perch
in the rim of my ear. Make her

multi-armed so she can catch,
parse and juggle the staccato bursts 
of racket, soaring sibilants that pass
for human speech.

Let her have a device to analyze 
the incoming cacophony, assemble 
syllables. Give her an algorithm
to detect possible words (in English),

try them out for meaning in the context
of a rapid conversation.
What I’m saying, God, is that she 
must be fast, perceptive, imaginative

and indefatigable. Try her out
on those words.
If you can’t detail an angel to me,
perhaps you can put video displays

on the forehead of each person I meet.
Like supertitles at the opera, their words 
will scroll gently across,
riding the wrinkles.

If you’ll do this, I promise 
to stop nodding inanely, laughing 
or looking serious at the wrong time.  
I will be a credit to your handiwork.

If you decide to answer me, God, 
please stand squarely in front of me.  
Let me see your lips 
when you speak.

My hearing was diminishing, and my tinnitus was increasing. I tried to get family members to repeat things more slowly, not louder, when I missed what they said. I tried to explain it was a matter of assembling syllables into actual words, then words into sentences. 

Despite all this, my career in tumor immunology continued. I became a research professor at the University of Washington School of Medicine. I went back to school part-time for a master’s degree in counseling from Antioch University Seattle and did both basic research and student counseling in the School of Nursing at UW. After a bout with cancer in 2000, I decided to retire from academic life.

I got my first pair of hearing aids in 1985 when I was 45 years old. The aids helped but were far from perfect, amplifying distracting background noise as well as conversation. I’ve lost count of how many generations of hearing aids I’ve been through in the past 36 years but there has been a steady improvement during that time. 

I just got new devices that are rechargeable—no more fumbling with batteries too small and slippery for arthritic hands! I asked those hands to learn American Sign Language but they have not been able to master the shapes. I think if I work at it more, I might “speak” with a heavy accent.

After a life-altering trip to Antarctica in 2007, I decided to return to a former passion, writing poetry. I took classes, found groups to meet with for critiques, and started publishing in print and online literary magazines. One of my “Poets on the Coast” poetry sisters, Mary Ellen Talley, was a school speech and hearing specialist. She helped me “own up” to my problem instead of joking about it or minimizing it. I wrote a series called “The Deaf Woman Poems.” Some of those are included in my full-length poetry collection, “Risking It,” that has just been published (April 2021) by Red Mountain Press. 

Mary Ellen told me about Hearing Health. I wrote to the magazine and received such a warm welcome about sharing my story. It’s nice at age 80 to feel part of this group, not alone, not cut off from others by deafness or by lack of understanding.

Sylvia Byrne Pollack lives in Seattle. “Risking It” is available via Red Mountain Press and through your local bookstore. This story originally appeared in the Spring 2021 issue of Hearing Health magazine.

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