Latest / Starkey Sound Bites: Hearing Aids, Tinnitus, and Hearing Healthcare / He Lost His Hearing, Then Learned to Hear With His Brain. | Matt Hay on Sound Bites

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He Lost His Hearing, Then Learned to Hear With His Brain. | Matt Hay on Sound Bites · Starkey Sound Bites: Hearing Aids, Tinnitus, and Hearing Healthcare

• 0:05
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Welcome to Starkey Soundbites.
• 0:06
  Dr. Dave Fabry: I'm Dave Fabry, Starkey's Chief Hearing Health Officer, and I'm excited for an overdue welcome to Dr.
• 0:13
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Matt Hay uh for uh being here for Starkey University.
• 0:19
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And also uh we couldn't miss the opportunity to bring him on finally to Starkey Soundbites because I've been wanting to do this for a long time now.
• 0:26
  Dr. Dave Fabry: So great to see you and be with you here today, man.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for having me, Dave.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's great to be here.
• 0:31
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Yeah, it's my pleasure.
• 0:32
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And uh before we begin, uh please hit subscribe, like.
• 0:36
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Uh um if you uh uh do this, it just helps us spread our message of better hearing and really helping raise awareness for people.
• 0:45
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Uh, the the now about a hundred episodes that we've had uh of people from all lots in life talking about their personal experience with hearing, their professional experience with hearing, and it just helps us do our mission.
• 0:56
  Dr. Dave Fabry: So when it comes to the world of hearing health care, uh Matt Hay has become a prominent uh figure.
• 1:01
  Dr. Dave Fabry: I've seen you numerous times uh provide a keynote, and every time it's different, and I learn something every time I hear you speak, Matt.
• 1:08
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And you're such a great storyteller, and really you speak with such vulnerability about your journey, and we're gonna get into that for those who haven't heard from you before, um, of your journey with hearing loss.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: But I appreciate you sharing that.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um on one hand, it's intentional, on the other hand, I don't really know how how else to be.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's just sort of the way that I live my life.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think I'm lucky that that resonates with some people.
• 1:34
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Well, it it resonates a lot, and and let's um let's dive into that point.
• 1:39
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And so, you know, you've described your journey, as I've heard you in the past, um, uh as a soundtrack of silence.
• 1:47
  Dr. Dave Fabry: What does that phrase mean to you when you first characterized it that way and today?
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe the Cliff Notes version of that is um I knew I was gonna lose my hearing.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I was diagnosed with a rare disease in college, and I knew this sort of slow steamroller of deafness was rolling my way.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: And in that time I started being very, very intentional about what I could still hear.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, my girlfriend and now wife, we zeroed in on music, and I listened to music with a ton of attention, and I was filing it away in almost this mental jukebox.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't think I was mature enough at the time to realize it, but looking back, I was creating a soundtrack for a life I had not yet lived, and that was my soundtrack of silence.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: So um fortunately, my story in the second half of my life has been not the work to maintain my hearing, but the work to recover my hearing.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that's what that soundtrack, you know, continues to be a big part of my life.
• 2:53
  Dr. Dave Fabry: That kind of change you were preparing to live in a world of silence and technology uh and your participation in an experimental uh uh procedure enables you to still have sound, but it's different, obviously.
• 3:09
  Dr. Dave Fabry: That's exactly right.
• 3:10
  Dr. Dave Fabry: But but but you're still in the auditory world, and it's such a beautiful metaphor, I think.
• 3:15
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And uh for you know, our our audience is primarily audiologists and hearing instrument specialists, but not everyone is familiar with uh neurofibromatosis.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: Can you just provide a little bit of a high level uh in terms of uh so neuro I have what is called neurofibromatosis type 2.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's a rare neurological disorder that impacts about one in 40,000 people.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um I lack a tumor suppressor gene that you didn't know until now you were lucky to have.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: And it means tumors can grow on the nerve sheath anywhere in my body.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: For reasons I don't think I still, maybe science doesn't understand these tumors love hearing nerves.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so I have bilateral acoustic neuromas that eventually damage the nerve uh to a point where I could no longer hear.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: So the experimental device that you talk about is called an auditory brainstem implant, which anybody in hearing care maybe read about it in one page of one textbook in one class, and they were probably told they don't really work.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: I I try to be proof that with a lot of work, a lot of coaching from my audiologist, a lot of support, they do work.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and you know, I have close to 96% open aided sentence recognition with no hearing nerve.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the AVI essentially bypasses every aspect of our naturally developed hearing process.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I have 12 electrodes sewn directly to my brainstem, and I hear with those 12 electrodes.
• 4:47
  Dr. Dave Fabry: It's just astounding.
• 4:48
  Dr. Dave Fabry: I mean, as as miraculous as cochlear implants are, they require uh that, you know, although the hair cells are all gone, they're they're implanted into the cochlea, and then that goes up the auditory pathway.
• 5:00
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Because typically, and in your case with NF2, as it's abbreviated, as you said, that is uh beyond the cochlea that your brainstem implant uh is it doesn't have that same tonotopic.
• 5:14
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Yes, there's some there's tonotopic organization, but with 12 electrodes sewn directly.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and there's a phrase I I fortunately hear more in the audiology community now and never once heard it in the first 15 years of having my implant, and that is brain hearing.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um I just don't know if science or industry was thinking about it that way.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I don't hear no part of my ears work.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: I only hear with my brain.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's crazy.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so I I think um sort of a dubious honor, but I I only hear with my brain, and I'm proof that we really do hear with our brains.
• 5:56
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Yes, you you are the embodiment of that statement when we say you don't hear with your ears, you hear with your brain.
• 6:02
  Dr. Dave Fabry: You are the picture that I have in my head when we make that statement because of your amazing progress.
• 6:08
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And and really, um, when people dismiss it and say, well, it didn't work, it doesn't work, it's it's uh it took a lot of work that you put in and invested in working with audiologists and caregivers to ensure, but but you did that work and uh and here you sit.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I recognize that I'm a bit of an extreme example, but sometimes um I'm very analogy-driven, and sometimes the extreme examples can help make a case um or make a point more strongly than you know, a typical one.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I think when I first of all, I'm very, very lucky that the surgeon found the right place in my brainstem to put those 12 electrodes.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm fortunate that my tumor that I became deaf a month, a year after the ABI was approved by the FDA.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: So luck of luck of timing, luck of being in the right place and the right doctor.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: But then over the next, the last 20 plus years, I've also been lucky that I've had amazing hearing care.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: I've had amazing access to hearing care.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: I've had the same audiologist for 20 years.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: When I say things sound echoey, she knows exactly what I mean when I say that.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: And that's so uncommon in healthcare right now.
• 7:23
  Dr. Dave Fabry: The continuity of care.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I um I recommend anybody, you know, see a professional and stick with somebody who gets to know you because I've benefited greatly from that.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: So there's there's a lot of privilege in the access and support that I've had, but I've also been willing to put in the work.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: I I think an expectation of I got a hearing aid or I got a CI or I got an AVI and I'm quote unquote fixed is inaccurate.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you've been given a really great tool.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: Now go to work and learn and put in the work.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I I guess I'm just programmed to operate that way.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: And then the last thing I'll say on that is I have become to think of my audiologist as a hearing coach.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: That I, you know, just like a baseball player with a hitch in their swing and they go back to their hitting coach, if something's a little off or echoey or background noise is bothering me, I've reached back out to my hearing coach who is a doctorate of audio of audiology.
• 8:24
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Well said.
• 8:26
  Dr. Dave Fabry: If you don't mind asking, um, when how old were you when you were first diagnosed with NS?
• 8:31
  Dr. Dave Fabry: About 18.
• 8:32
  Dr. Dave Fabry: 18.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: A very invincible college.
• 8:35
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Right.
• 8:35
  Dr. Dave Fabry: I mean, at that age, and I've heard you speak about this, but you know, um compared with now, because it's a very different prism that you're hearing through, if you will.
• 8:45
  Dr. Dave Fabry: But at that moment, when you're 18, invincible and young, and you find out this just you know agonizing diagnosis, and you started on the the soundtrack of what you anticipated you were going to be on.
• 8:57
  Dr. Dave Fabry: But what was what was the thing that you feared most at that point at 18 when you're invincible and you hit that diagnosis?
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh well, say initially denial can be a really powerful thing.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I I think like with any loss, there's a grieving period.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I nobody explained it to me this way.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't recognize this at the time, but looking back, I started to grieve, and we all do that in our own way and our own pace.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I went through all of those steps, you know, starting with denial and getting to acceptance.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: I think um the feeling that I had, I'm in college with some of my best friends.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: I had wonderful family, I had job opportunities, probably graduating with a business degree.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I couldn't have had a better network.
• 9:45
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Yeah.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I had still felt super, super alone.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, because even around a lot of people, they did not know what I was going through.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: And in 1997, you couldn't jump on Facebook and join a chat group uh of other people living with your rare disease.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember feeling very, very alone.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then not hearing loss disconnected me.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I think a lot of people feel this way.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: You can be in a crowded room and everybody's talking and laughing, and you can't quite pick up what's going on, you very quickly feel disconnected.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I'm I'm pretty extroverted.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so the idea of losing that connection with my friends and family and community was um was really scary.
• 10:33
  Dr. Dave Fabry: I can only imagine.
• 10:34
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And and we talk about hearing loss as an invisible disability, and here you are as a young, not yet even 20-year-old.
• 10:41
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Yep.
• 10:42
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And and and the the caution I always give to audiologists and young audiologists is that we're so we not to get lost in the technical details of the information you're providing.
• 10:52
  Dr. Dave Fabry: But remember that we don't know that the pain and the fear that patients, our patients are carrying around with them and what brought them to that point.
• 11:01
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And we know when we enter, and then you've been the beneficiary, as you say, of having the same audiologist for 20 years.
• 11:07
  Dr. Dave Fabry: But imagine if you hadn't, and every time you had to re-explain um your condition and somebody who maybe wasn't at familiar with NF2 and what was possible, what wasn't.
• 11:17
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And and I I can only imagine, though, when uh thinking about this and preparing for this discussion at 18, just what you were hit with.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it it and I think in any healthcare that mental health aspect gets lost.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a stretch to say I am alive because I had clinicians, audiologists, neurosurgeons who I heard use the phrase over and over again, we're we treat the patient, not the scan.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: We treat the patient, not the audiogram.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like, and that doesn't mean anything to you in the time, but looking back, how lucky I am to have had people that didn't treat the piece of paper, they treated me.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: And um, if there wasn't any change, let's not proactively go in and start poking around your brain stem.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: I also, one of the reasons I'm so happy to be here is, and I didn't appreciate this at the time, but I could have walked into that very first audiologist clinic and walked out with maybe some odd test results and new hearing aids.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: Because three months later I would have been back for more.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: I had an audiologist say, based on my expertise and skill, your results are not coming back the way that I would expect them to.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: And they told me to go have to get to reach out uh to a neurologist and schedule an MRI.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a stretch to say that audiologist saved my life.
• 12:43
  Dr. Dave Fabry: That was life-changing.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: Because the MRI showed two two-centimeter tumors compressing my brain stem.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I could have just as easily kept going back to get bigger and bigger hearing aids without ever knowing that there was a really serious underlying cause of my hearing loss.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I will forever be indebted to the hearing care community because of that.
• 13:04
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Yeah, and so important that the audiologist isn't just focused on these for those that are watching.
• 13:09
  Dr. Dave Fabry: I'm holding my ears, you know, and focused on what you see, or even at the coglia level, that we're thinking about the patient and how they interface with the world is so critical.
• 13:18
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And so, and you were so fortunate.
• 13:20
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Uh, you know, I I'd like to say that everyone would have done the same, but but you know, I'd hope that every qualified audiologist would do the same, but but there's no guarantee.
• 13:29
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And so sometimes it's uh it's good to have timing and like you said, with uh ABI being approved and and when this was happening to you, and then also um uh to have the good fortune to run into an audiologist that would take care of you over that time.
• 13:44
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Um so now, you know, as you mentioned, you intentionally stored music in your memory before losing the hearing.
• 13:51
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Why did you decide that music were the things that you wanted to program into your brain in this soundtrack of silence?
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: So uh it's a great question.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: And there was a period of about nine months from the time that my gradual hearing loss left me totally deaf.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I had uh nearly a year of deafness, and to clarify, that's little d deafness because I'm I'm not really part of the capital D deaf community.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know that community, so we were investigating what I could do to uh to maybe have a chance to hear again.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: But not knowing any of that, if any of that existed or if it would work, I thought I still have all of these songs in my head.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: I can still remember what song was playing the day I got my driver's license and picked up my friends.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: I can still remember the song that was playing when my dad caught a muskie in Northwest Ontario.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like these really special moments.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: And even though I can't hear anything anymore, I can absolutely hear those chords to let it be, you know, in my head.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I thought I need to double down on that.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I I associate all these special moments in my life with the song that was playing in the background, that soundtrack to the silence.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so I really wanted to be intentional about loading up that jukebox so that when I'm dancing with my daughter or her wedding, I could press the mental like song C7 and um the way you look tonight would would play.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and so that was my rationale.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually a super fun conversation to have with your friends.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: What what songs would be on the soundtrack of your life?
• 15:38
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And I played this game.
• 15:39
  Dr. Dave Fabry: This absolutely resonates with you.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: You learn a ton about your friends, it makes great conversations, but I will tell you what is a lot less fun when you're doing it in reality.
• 15:48
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Oh, good grief, yeah.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so music just was something that it had such an emotive connection.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: I thought that's the thing that I want to hang on to.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: That and the sound of my wife laughing.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: Those are the sounds that I wanted to really provide.
• 16:00
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Yeah, because I've always said music is the soundtrack of our life, but also music and a song is a time machine.
• 16:08
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And I'm sure that it was sort of both of those was why I was asking the question too was to remember um, you know, what linked to that, but then also to be able to re use and save for the future.
• 16:19
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Yes.
• 16:19
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Not knowing that you were going to have the ABI at the time, too, you know, early on, probably.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: So here's a perfect and totally unplanned thought is that when you asked about that moment where you lost hearing, my in my brain, I immediately went to Elton.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: I heard Elton John singing Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: And even as I was answering that question, I could feel the line Frozen here on the ladder of my life.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: Goosebumps.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: Because at 18, I thought, uh, that's how I feel right now.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I couldn't put those words together, but Elton John could.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Frozen here on the ladder of my life.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I still hear that song to this day when the biophic, the Elton John Rocketman biophic came out, and that song came on, and I could hear it, I could read it on caption, I could remember it.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember sitting on my couch in our guest room, just tears streaming because it still has such an emotional connection to me.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's a great line.
• 17:15
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Music does, it's a fantastic line.
• 17:17
  Dr. Dave Fabry: What a great songwriter and songwriting partnership with Bernie Toppin.
• 17:20
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Um, and uh that just answered my next question, which was what song was the breakthrough moment?
• 17:25
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Yeah, I don't even need to ask that.
• 17:27
  Dr. Dave Fabry: So um what do people without hearing loss least understand about gradually losing hearing?
• 17:35
  Dr. Dave Fabry: As you did.
• 17:36
  Dr. Dave Fabry: So I mean, yours was really rapid for what most people experience, but but what do people without hearing loss not understand about what happens in that transition?
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, in some ways, losing your hearing loss gradually is uh if you're going to lose your hearing, it's a pretty great way to do it because I accidentally became a really great lip reader.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I can walk into a room and like go full Jason Bourne within seconds.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: I can tell you where the dishes are going to be clanking, where the DJ is gonna be playing, and I will get there early and find a seat in a corner behind the drapes where I can face out and see everybody, and I don't have background noise, and the drapes will absorb sound, and I do those mental gymnastics in every room I walk into because I had an opportunity.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: I I learned that accidentally.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: The thing that I think is a very common misconception is when you when people learn you might have hearing loss or you're losing your hearing, it's for whatever reason, it's very natural to assume it's volume.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: For me, it was never volume.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: Even now, my volume, I can turn up on my implant, and I my volume's way better than yours.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's a speech understanding thing.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know why, but just the world thinks of hearing loss is volume.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so when people knew that, they would talk louder.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I might be shouting.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: All that means is I'm hearing garbled words more loudly.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I think that is a loss.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: So if you have a loved one with hearing loss, it might be volume, but it might also be speech understanding.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I think there's a disconnect there.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I listen to the our TV goes up to a hundred um volume.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: I listen on six.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: My family walks in and turns it up because my volume is great, but I still need close captioning because it's that speech understanding, and I think that's missed sometimes.
• 19:28
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And and another thing that I've always advised people with or without hearing aids, um, that when they are living with someone who has a hearing loss, come into the room, say their name.
• 19:38
  Dr. Dave Fabry: We're programmed to hear our name and then turn towards people.
• 19:42
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And that helps with the lip reading element that you mentioned that you got so good at.
• 19:46
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And so just simply say their name, break concentration on whatever they were work w paying attention to, to them, and then they can lip read and they're intentional in their listening.
• 19:55
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And I think that subtle cue is the best one I advise people who don't know anything about hearing loss or understand what people are going through.
• 20:03
  Dr. Dave Fabry: But uh but what you said is you're way better.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's such great and easy advice.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I learned that lesson from my four-year-olds.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, they're 20 now, but when they were four, I realized when they walked in, they would say, Hey dad, before anything else they would say, Hey dad, hey dad.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I just because they knew even at age four, I got to get his attention first before I start saying what it is, you know, and at four, there's only about seven things you need.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: But they knew, hey dad.
• 20:33
  Dr. Dave Fabry: So you're totally and they knew that that would that you'd pick up on it.
• 20:36
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Well, I knew that we'd run out of time, and we have, but I'd like to for people who would like to learn more about your story, can you tell us the name of your book and how they would get it, how they can get it?
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: So I wrote a book called Soundtrack of Silence.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: Soundtrack of Silence, Love, Lost, and a Playlist for Life.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: And uh it is, it's my memoir, and I I struggled with the idea of writing a memoir because I feel like you know I have this rare disease and I lost my hearing, and I'm the luckiest guy in the world.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I mentioned that sort of lost and alone feeling when I got diagnosed.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so I wrote the book that I wish I had had when I was going through that.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: So um, you know, it's a little bit about relationships, it's a lot about music, it's a little bit about hearing loss.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it's you know, soundtrack of silence, put it in Google or ChatGPT, and you can probably find it somewhere.
• 21:31
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Well, I thank you for that.
• 21:33
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And uh I encourage people, if they're living with someone with hearing loss, to help get in the mindset of someone who wrote a very personal, vulnerable story about the soundtrack, uh uh, you know, and and really your life experience with this is the most significant loss that anyone that I'm aware of could but also it's of loss and recovery, you know, in the sense of the the opportunity through the brainstem implant to re-engage and stay in the hearing world uh is just uh just such a wonderful uh ongoing conclusion with this.
• 22:08
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And the way that you live your life now by educating people about hearing loss, talking to uh groups of people with hearing loss or professionals, and reminding us of our responsibility to always um uh use two ears and one mouth to listen to the patient's concerns and keep that in mind beyond the audiogram.
• 22:28
  Dr. Dave Fabry: So thank you for sharing your story.
• 22:29
  Dr. Dave Fabry: I know you're gonna knock it out of the park this afternoon in your keynote that you're giving to Starkey University, uh, and I can't wait to hear it.
• 22:37
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And uh and every time I hear you, I learn something new.
• 22:40
  Dr. Dave Fabry: So thank you for spending the time with us.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's my pleasure, Dave.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, and thanks, Starkey, for giving me the opportunity.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: It uh it is genuinely, genuinely my pleasure.
• 22:50
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Thank you.
• 22:50
  Dr. Dave Fabry: And for our listeners, if you enjoyed this episode, subscribe, like, share, um, and uh suggest other ideas of other experts or people that you've learned about in journeys that they're going through with their hearing or can offer tips, um uh please send them to us at soundbites at Starkey.com.
• 23:09
  Dr. Dave Fabry: Uh we look forward to seeing and hearing you again very soon.