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From: “Oh, I’m sorry” 😢 To: “WTF?” 😳
Lesley Reynolds didn't think much of it at first. In conversations, she'd catch a few words and piece together the rest. Sometimes she guessed right. Sometimes a patient mentioned her sick dog and Lesley heard "daughter" instead.
Her husband, Dr. Aamer Khan, noticed gradually — and misread it for years. "I thought she was ignoring me," he said. "I'd have to ask again and again... Eventually the penny dropped, and I began to realize that Lesley could not HEAR me." Lesley was reading his lips when he faced her. When he didn't, the gaps showed.
What followed wasn't obvious or dramatic. Lesley gradually pulled back from her own patients at the skin clinic she co-founded with her husband. Lesley would rather hand them off, than risk mishearing something important.
At family gatherings, Lesley found reasons to be in the kitchen instead of the conversation. "It was so tiring trying to keep the hearing loss a secret," she said.
It took a patient — a stranger, wearing hearing aids herself — asking Lesley directly if she had a hearing problem before she finally got tested.
The audiologist's reaction told her everything: "I find it absolutely incredible that you managed to interact with people, because your hearing loss is really significant."
This issue, we're looking at the part of hearing loss that has nothing to do with devices or decibels: the emotional weight of finding out, being told, and deciding what to do next — including one of the hardest conversations of all, the one with your employer.
Diving in….
🎢 Hearing Loss Grief is Real
The hearing health community often describes the emotional path through hearing loss using a framework borrowed from grief research — Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's five stages, adapted for hearing loss by audiologists at the University of Iowa. It's not a strict sequence everyone follows, and not everyone experiences every stage, but it maps closely onto what people like Lesley describe.
Denial comes first, often tangled up with stigma: "I did not want my friends to know that I had a hearing aid because it somehow made me feel less capable."
Anger can follow once the problem becomes undeniable — frustration directed at an audiologist, a hearing aid that "doesn't work," or no one in particular.
Bargaining shows up as minimizing: "I didn't really like going to concerts anyway."
Depression can set in as the isolation compounds, particularly when someone starts avoiding the situations where their hearing loss feels most exposed.
Acceptance, when it comes, usually depends on having people around you who make it safe to admit what's actually happening
Three things:
The five stages — denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance — aren't a strict sequence, and not everyone passes through all of them or in the same order.
Denial is often tangled up with stigma, not stubbornness — the fear of feeling "less capable" is a major reason people avoid getting tested at all.
According to the Hearing Loss Association of America, people who do eventually treat their hearing loss wait an average of nine years after diagnosis before getting their first hearing aid.
Our take: Lesley's own regret, looking back, wasn't really about the hearing aids. It was about the delay: "I really wish I'd checked my hearing sooner, not just because of our relationship, but because of my whole life." Nine years is the average wait time nationally — which means for a lot of people, regret may be on the horizon.
🫂 How To Bring It Up With Someone Suffering
Dr. Khan's experience is worth sitting with, because most people navigating a loved one's hearing loss are standing exactly where he was: noticing something is off long before the other person is ready to name it.
His honest reflection: "I think I could have been more engaging and empathetic, but hearing loss does not just affect one person — both the partner and the person with hearing loss wear down.
" Repeating yourself, over and over, wears down the goodwill in a conversation.” Eventually, as he put it, "you wonder if it's worthwhile saying it at all."
Three things:
Raise it gently and specifically, tied to a moment rather than a character judgment — "I noticed you didn't catch what I said at dinner" lands differently than "you never listen."
Recognize that avoidance is often about stigma, not stubbornness. Lesley wasn't ignoring her husband; she was protecting herself from feeling "less capable."
Frame a hearing test as information-gathering, not a verdict. Nobody wants to be told there's something wrong with them; almost everyone can agree to "let's just check."
Our take: For Lesley, it wasn't her husband or a friend who finally broke through — it was a patient's casual question. If you're the one who's noticed, you might not be the one who gets through either, and that's okay. What matters is that it happens.
💼 Telling Your Employer
If the personal conversation is hard, the professional one can feel even higher-stakes.
According to HLAA, only 57.1% of adults with hearing loss are employed, compared to 73.3% of people without hearing loss, and workers with hearing loss earn roughly 25% less on average. This is $23,481 vs. $31,272 in mean wages, per The Hearing Journal.
Here's what the law actually says:
You are not required to disclose a hearing condition to get or keep a job, unless you're requesting a reasonable accommodation. Disclosure is your choice, and you control the timing.
Your hearing aids or cochlear implant don't count against you for legal protection. The ADA evaluates whether your condition is "substantially limiting" without factoring in how well a device compensates for it.
Reasonable accommodations are often simpler than people expect: captioned phone calls, real-time captioning (CART) services, assistive listening devices at your desk, written follow-ups after verbal instructions, and modest changes to seating or meeting format.
Our take: Employment and wage gaps alone, are reasons this conversation matters as much as it does. A practical approach that works for a lot of people: request the accommodation in writing, focus on what you need rather than a diagnosis, and loop in HR if a direct manager conversation feels risky. You're allowed to disclose only as much as is relevant to the accommodation you're requesting — which is usually a lot less than people fear going in.
American's with Disabilities Act (ADA) | Accommodation Ideas from the JAN | Hearing Loss by the Numbers from HLAA
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