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Showing posts with the label senior citizens isolation

Depression in the senior citizen years

    Everyone gets sad and melancholy at some point in their lives. Maybe it’s a parent who has passed away. Or perhaps a relationship ending happens to everybody. Most folks usually move on and recover. Depression is a little different. It’s a feeling that can come out of nowhere and stay with you. This often happens to older folks who find it challenging to deal with the senior citizen years, isolation, and then deal with depression.   Depression is a disorder that isn’t always accepted by people who don’t understand what it means to be depressed. Today, the public is more understanding than in years past. They considered that depression was just a bad attitude or a weakness.   In years past, some tried to self-medicate by drinking, which made it worse. Alcohol is a depressant.   In my own case, I felt something was not quite right in high school. I came from a typical family. I had friends, and most of the time, things appeared all right...

Hearing Problems

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What did you say?  This must be one of the most exacerbating things that have happened to me over the last few years. Due to my Meniere’s disease problems, I have lost about 80 percent of my hearing. I can no longer talk on the phone or have a normal conversation without asking someone to repeat what they said.   I went to my ENT about five years ago when things started to get bad, and he told me there wasn’t much he could do. We tried a bombardment of steroids. It didn’t work. The next step was a hearing aid. I was stunned when I learned my wife’s insurance paid for it. The only one they paid for was the cheapest one, and it didn’t work. It was more of an amplifier than a hearing aid.   It's discouraging because I can’t listen to music and watching TV or movies with closed captions doesn’t always work.   My son suggested that I learn sign language. But who would I communicate with since no one in my family knows sign language either?   ...