Keeping Dad on Top of his Game

Hearing and Speech Agency’s staff help people see the light about hearing aids.

B y R o b i n T. R e i d, Urbanite Magazine

Julie Norin spends a lot of time helping people to see as well as hear. The 40-year-old fits patients with hearing aids, perceived as cumbersome attributes of old age. But once they see how sleek and efficient today’s hearing aids are, not to mention how much better they sound, the stigma usually vanishes.

“Twenty years ago, hearing aids were awful,” Norin says. “Technology has changed so drastically that it’s like comparing an eight-track tape with an iPod. Speech clarity is so much better, and many hearing aids are invisible or resemble hightech phones or listening devices.

“You have to explain this with some urgency,” she continues, “but you can’t make people do something they’re not ready to do. It’s a balancing act.” One such balancing act hit close to home for Norin. Her father, Edward Spitz, was showing signs of hearing loss several years ago, but was most definitely not interested in getting hearing aids.

“Only in his 60s, he thought he would look old,” she recalls. “He didn’t recognize his TV was louder or that we had to repeat things in conversation all the time. I was concerned that he was missing major parts of conversation and filling in too many gaps with what he thought he heard, which is something people do when they have a hearing loss.” To Spitz, he wasn’t the problem; everyone else was. “Everyone around me mumbled,” he recalls.

His opinion changed in November. While on a riverboat cruise in Europe, he and his wife became friendly with a man slightly his junior who used hearing aids. “And he was happy to have them,” Spitz adds. “He had more fun than I did.” Upon return, Spitz visited his daughter at HASA to be fitted with hearing aids. “We talked about what was most important to him in terms of style and technology, which is what I do with every patient,” Norin says. “I ask about situations in which they struggle to hear. Background noise is usually the culprit”

Spitz chose a small device that fits behind his ear and is almost invisible. The first night he used it, Norin was thrilled, yet not surprised, that he could hear her perfectly well, even when they sat down together in a crowded restaurant. Helping her father was yet another reinforcement for Norin that she’d chosen the right field—and the right employer. The former advertising sales executive returned to school six years ago after she’d spent some time with a speech pathologist.

“My eldest son was diagnosed with apraxia when he was 2; he was unable to talk,” she says. “I was so appreciative of his speech pathologist and the difference she made in our lives that I went back to school to study speech pathology.” She veered into audiology soon afterward partly because she liked the gadgetry involved. “As a kid I liked to take things apart,” she explains. “I’m the one who programs all the electronics at home. I’m a gadget girl.”

And that’s her nickname at HASA, where she is an audiology extern—her title until she receives her doctorate in May. Originally established in 1926 as a community center for the hard-of-hearing, the nonprofit agency provides comprehensive audiology services, speech therapy, occupational therapy for children, and sign language interpreters. Also within the state-of-the-art facility is the Gateway School for children with communication disorders. Audiology fees are based on income. And that is one of the reasons Norin enjoys working for HASA.

“Because we offer clinical services and hearing aids on a sliding scale, we are able to help patients on a fixed income,” she says. “I don’t know of any other place in the area that does that. We also participate in the Hear Now Program, run through Starkey, a hearing aid manufacturer [that provides the latest hearing aids to people who otherwise could not afford them]. We are able to do what we love: work with patients and make hearing aids affordable.”

In addition to Starkey, HASA works with all of the major hearing aid manufacturers, something Norin says other clinics don’t always do.

“I like the flexibility in what we offer our patients,” she explains. “One patient came to us because the last audiologist he worked with only carried one manufacturer, so he was limited to their products. We work with that manufacturer too, but my patient was able to choose hearing aids from another manufacturer based on not only price, but also what the hearing aids could do for him.”

Norin is also passionate about hearing protection. She has fit many patients with musician’s earplugs, as well as other types of custom hearing protection devices, which she says are important “for protection from noise created by everyday items, including power tools.” “I went into this field to help people,” she continues. “If I was going to dedicate my time, I wanted to feel like there was a greater purpose.”

And of course, she adds, “I love gadgets.”