I was watching a Minnesota Twins’ baseball game the other night when another hideous Viagra ad appeared. As debase as it is to use sex as a sales tool, I wish these kinds of guerilla marketing tactics were used to sell hearing aids. Talk about a home run for all hearing impaired people! As a 35-year-old with hearing loss, I’m part of a large team of young and old. One national study concluded that, of the millions of people who need hearing aids, only about 24 percent have them. This batting average stinks and improvement is needed.
Denial, cost and vanity are among the barriers to hearing aid use. But it doesn’t make sense to be too vain to wear a hearing aid while we openly talk about our sagging sex lives on television.
Here’s the wind up and the pitch: show us an ad featuring a couple doing something romantic like lying on the ocean sand, gazing into the sunset and listening to each other. At the end of the ad, advise people to consult their doctors to get fitted for aids.
As I consider how a batter rounds the bases, it strikes me that in order to even get up to bat, you need to be able to communicate before safely reaching first base. Language is the baseball tossed back and forth between players. All lovers fling pitches, play catch and field grounders as they negotiate love emotionally, spiritually and, yes, physically.
Ready for a curve ball? Few health plans cover hearing aids. My insurance company didn’t reimburse me a dime of the $3,000 that I was out-of-pocket for my current aids. The call? Hearing aids are “not a medical necessity.”
I’ve got to argue with the umpire on this one. Our team of hearing-impaired people suffers from social isolation, depression and anxiety because we cannot hear without the help of an aid. And cost may be a deterrent, thus people forego an active, vibrant life possible with an aid.
What’s even more outrageous is that, according to a pet insurance Web site, if your dog Fido needs hearing aids, he’s covered. This includes the cost of the hearing aids, testing and fitting. This is a call from the ump that might just get me kicked out of the game!
The lack of insurance reimbursement is no doubt a bad call but we as players must shake it off and stay in the game. We must want to win enough to use the best aids we can afford. And we’ve got to go the distance and endure the spring training it takes to grow accustomed to hearing with an aid.
After all, when you’ve rounded the bases to the whirr of cameras, to the throbbing theme song from “The Natural,” and to the cheers washing over you as you slide into home plate, don’t you want to hear your partner say, “I love you?”
So get into the game of life, whether you are 16 or 64. Let’s play some good offense, for we have been on defense too long. Let’s get suited up with a good hearing aid and warm up by learning to hear with our aids. Then hit a home run for all hearing- impaired people in America. n
Melissa Reid is married and lives in Mound, Minn. She has taught composition for the past seven years at Minneapolis Community & Technical College. She recently attended the 2005 Summer Selective Institute, hosted by The Minnesota Writing Project, based at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.
For a review of the effectiveness of canine hearing aids, visit www.lsu.edu/deafness/aid.htm.
