Audiologist Collette Hadden of Hearing Specialists, 4509 Stone Ave., said there are a number of causes for hearing loss. There are environmental factors, people who work in a noisy environment, such as farmers and workers in heavily industial occupations who experience hearing loss, as do some people who listened to way too much loud music, particularly heavily amped rock 'n' roll, as they were growing up. The world is just a noisier place.

The most prominent factor, however, continues to be heredity.

"I'm going to guess that primarily the cause of this is hereditary," Hadden said. "But the environmental factor certainly has something to do with it."

Ambroson, director of alumni relations at Morningside College and a once-upon-a-time rocker, wouldn't disagree.

He noticed that his hearing was progressively fading about 10 to 12 years ago.

"I found that I was having trouble," he said. "I was constantly saying, 'Would you repeat that?' So I went and got checked."

A friend recommended he see a local specialist, Dr. John Pallanch, who has since left the community.

"I wanted to go to an eye, ears, nose and throat person as opposed to going to Johnny's Hearing Aid Place over on wherever it may be. I wanted to be checked by some professional person, a medical doctor. Anyway, that occurred, and they suggested at that time I look into hearing aids," he said.

He then learned heredity's import.

"I have a long history in my family on my mother's side of the family where it goes back several generations where my great-grandparents and grandparents and my mother and all of her siblings, every one of them have had hearing aids or hearing devices," Ambroson said.

Hearing loss affected all of those family members as they neared 50, and that included Ambroson and his twin brother. He noted that his mother's two uncles were both practically deaf at the end of their lives. "They were writing notes and, to a certain extent, they could read lips; but their response was always by note," he said. "Or it was a combination of reading lips and the person writing out whatever it is they wanted to say to them."

Following in his family's lip steps, Ambroson has become a proficient lip reader. Of sorts.

"I concentrate just below the nose and to the chin. I have to watch. Not only do I listen intently, but I am watching the people's lips," he said.

This can make for an uncomfortable situation for the person who is the object of "the stare," he admits. It's a stare to rival Jack Bauer's or Dirty Harry's.

"If I feel comfortable about it, I'll say something to somebody about it so that they don't feel uncomfortable with me," he said, noting that people who know him have little trouble dealing with the stare.

As for the hearing aids, which he seldom uses, he said he bought a pair, which he was told he needed, about eight years ago. But they just didn't work to his satisfaction, even though they were the top-of-the-line models prescribed by Pallanch.

"What was happening was instead of hearing what you were saying to me, I would get the extraneous noise all around me. And actually it was drivng me nuts. So I just took them out and I seldom wear them. I do when I go to church," he said.

He expects that to change, though, sometime within the next 60 to 90 days when he goes shopping for some new hearing aids. His twin brother and best friend, both hearing challenged as well, have new models and swear by the updated technology. His friend even had the same extraneous noise problem that vexed Ambroson with his old aids, a problem the friend doesn't have with the newer models.

Meanwhile, he has adjusted pretty well to the hearing loss.

He is careful to keep the volume low on his TV and stereo at home, using earphones so as not to offend his condo neighbors, A musician who used to play in a rock band back in the '60s and early '70s, Ambroson still does some keyboard work, and he admits that the loud concerts at which he played or maybe just attended as a fan may have affected his hearing, as well.

He traveled with the Morningside College Choir on a recent choral concert tour. "And one of the songs that they did as part of a memorial to the young men and women who have fought and died in the various wars and conflicts ... was a song called 'How Softly They Rest,'" he noted. "And the dynamics of that song, they go from quadruple pianissimo, which is very, very soft, to probably a weak forte, which is a little louder. For me, that's extremely difficult. Not only is it hard for me to hear the song, but then I don't catch the words at all."

'Tis reason enough for Ambroson to check out a new hearing aid.

Around the office, staff members know that they need to speak up around him, though actual yelling isn't necessary, and that occasionally they will have to repeat something.

Karen Dreessen, his secretary for the past year, said she writes things out for him most of the time. And she appreciates the fact that he seems to have a sense of humor about his problem.

"He'll make fun of himself or he'll make hand gestures and 'Hunnhhhh?' He's pretty good about it. He's not grouchy at all," she said. "We have a work study who works out here, a student. And a lot of times, I'll be sitting at my desk, and she'll be sitting here. And I'll say something to Gene, and he'll say 'Hunnhhhh?' And she'll look at me, and I'll look at her, and we just kind of giggle. But then I repeat it."

Ambroson has a hearing assisted receiver set for his home telephone, but he manages to get by with an unassisted phone at Morningside.

Some words are tougher to pick up than others. As are some voices. Harder, more guttural voices are easier to understand -- say, German over French. And numbers can be a problem. They tend to run together, soundwise, he noted.

His colleagues also learn that if they are taking to him from the side or back, he won't hear a thing. He needs to be able to see the speaker or where the sound is coming from, to use that lip-reading technique, Ambroson said.

He noted that the lip-reading is limited. He can't just read lips from a distance. He needs to hear the words, too.

And, yes, his eyesight is still good.

"I'm not quite falling apart," he quipped -- staring the point home.

http://www.siouxcityjournal.com/articles/2007/04/25/news/top/17ae83b1ea282aab862572c8000db20e.txt