Places to call home: Amanda’s story

When I was a kid, I used to love reading explorer books, like Jack London’s Call of the Wild. And I loved the cold winter weather and the blue skies of New England. I can fully remember the blizzard of 1978, playing in the snow and cross-country skiing over the frozen lake across the street. Fast forward to 2019, when my son did a one-week internship on a sled-dog farm up in Finnish Lapland. When he told me about people going out with the dogs for days at a time, I just knew we had to do that. In February 2020, we went on a five-day dog sledding ‘safari’ as a family. It was amazing, and that’s when I first fell in love with the Arctic. 

My interest really grew during the pandemic, when my job shifted remote and my twins graduated from high school. Suddenly, I had the space and time to explore the Arctic Circle. Up there, the light is incredible. The darkness is amazing. And the dogs are amazing, too! Last winter, I ended up going back to the dog farm to work for three months. I admit it was a bit much, working 16-hour days alongside the 20-year-olds, but I will go back. It’s such a magical place, and it feels like you’re in a different world. And maybe the big experiences I’ve had there are the counterpoint to a world that is tough right now. You are forced to kind of step away from it when you're wearing five layers of clothing to deal with minus 30 degrees Celsius (minus 20 Fahrenheit), and you’re focused on wiggling your toes to avoid frostbite! So it was a gradual process, but I can say that things that once seemed extreme – like long ski-trekking expeditions in Norway or trips to Greenland – are now within reach.

I've had hearing aids for just about two years now, and they have literally changed my life. As a child, I had hearing loss but only with very high pitches. Perhaps because I'm not a musician, nobody worried too much or told me to think about getting tested as I aged. At the time, hearing aids were not what they are today. Maybe the doctors decided that hearing aids would be stigmatizing and just not worth it, especially since I already wore glasses. In 2009 I got tinnitus, which further reduced my hearing. Doctors said there was nothing I could do about it, so I learned to live with tinnitus, too. But in 2020, when everybody started wearing masks, I really struggled – especially because we were living in Brussels and speaking French. I found that the first audiologist I went to was, well, not a good match, but the second one was fabulous. Tests revealed that I had moderate hearing loss and was able to hear only 30% of a conversation, with my brain filling in the rest.  

Still, I’m not sure I would have decided to see an audiologist on my own. But a good English friend of mine came to visit and asked jokingly when I would be getting an ear trumpet, a last-generation hearing aid. And she kept on me, having noticed how loudly we all spoke in the house. So I ended up getting help because of this friend as well as my own realization that I kept having to repeat the French equivalent of “What?” about five times through the mask.

It probably took me about a year to get fully used to having hearing aids, but they made a real difference. When I went back to the dog farm early this year, for the first time I could actually hear the runners of the sled, the dogs’ breath and the snow falling off those magical trees. And back in Massachusetts, I could hear the crickets, the leaves rustling and the owls calling at night – which I had never heard before. What I didn’t expect was the way these sounds almost replaced the tinnitus because they were in the same range. Now I know that without my hearing aids, I would still be missing out on so many details of life, especially outdoors.

I guess the main thing I have learned is that I can keep on doing what I like to do. My next trip will be to Greenland for two weeks in March. By then, the lakes and fjords that we will be skiing over will be frozen solid. I’ll be going with a guide and a small group. We will be pulling our own supplies and skiing along the Arctic Circle, from Sisimiut to Kangerlussuaq. I’ve already tested out my power banks in the freezer for a couple of nights to make sure that they can hold the charge for my hearing aids. Up there, it will actually be colder than a freezer, but if I tuck the power banks into my sleeping bag at night to recharge the hearing aids, I should be fine.

I’m even thinking of doing the ice cap crossing in Greenland one day. The first person who did it was Fridtjof Nansen, who later in the 1920s developed the Nansen passport, the first internationally recognized refugee travel document and a precursor to refugee status. I think this would bring my Arctic experiences and migration research hats together. But that trip involves crossing over crevasses and pulling four weeks of supplies, so I’ll see how the two-week trip goes first.

You know, I’m in the age group that increasingly needs hearing aids and rejects them because they think they're going to look like their grandma. But hearing aids are empowering and enabling. It’s really important to find the right audiologist for you, and yes, it did take me time to adjust to my hearing aids. Sometimes I still have to remind people who spot my hearing aids that I actually can hear, and they don’t need to translate for me! But what I really want others to know is that because hearing loss can come on so gradually, you may not realize that you're missing out. Whether it's Arctic exploration, walks in the woods, sitting in your garden or listening to the birds, there are so many sounds out there – and hearing aids just make a remarkable difference.

Amanda wears Phonak Audéo Paradise hearing aids.