Hearing Loss LIVE! in Five #Hearingloss and #Ototoxicity

In our #hearingloss #classes we find subjects that help our students get in the KNOW. One of them was Otoxicity.

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Transcript

Welcome to Hearing Loss LIVe! in 5.

Julia: Hello and welcome to Hearing Loss LIVE! in 5. We hope you are remembering to subscribe, like and share. Check out our new content at hearinglosslive.com. New website, big ass cups for sale. So we have a class called conversation lipreading, and these are folks who some of them have been with us for three or four years,

and they've taken the strategies classes, and they've taken the lip shapes, and they are now practicing in a safe environment,

discussions, everyday discussion. We do all sorts of it's always different. There's new material every week, anything from what's your favorite food to what did you do as a kid to-- one day we were talking,

so some of this, the students are like, can we have a conversation on this?

We happen to get on

ototoxicity, ototoxicity.

So I said, You know what? They didn't know what that was. I think only one of them knew what that was, and that's probably because she was an occupational therapist at one point,

I gave them the homework assignment, don't want to scare anybody with the homework word,

but I said, I want you to go home and pull up your prescriptions and read the side effects.

And

they all came back to class the next week and went, Oh my gosh, I'm on five different drugs that cause ototoxicity, and my doctors never told me.

So we talked about it and and had some sentences around it. It ended up turning into this huge conversation about, who do you talk to?

You don't talk to your doctor about this stuff. This is what your pharmacist gets paid to talk to you about. And I want to emphasize that, because I know the pharmacist is busy. I get it. But if you're checking that box, which legally every state you have to, that says, I don't need to have a conversation with my pharmacist, and you don't know the side effects, you're hurting yourself in knowledge, right?

The doctors know the medications, but they don't know all of the side effects.

They know what they're prescribed for, that's kind of what they're taught.

Am I making sense Chelle?

Okay, so I do. I do want to say, you know, if you're on multiple medications, sometimes you have to weigh in on

medication versus the side effects

and to have more open conversations around ototoxicity with your doctors and with your pharmacists.

What was your takeaway from that class? It was an intense class for an hour. I'm not going to lie, they're usually not very intense, but this was a great conversation

around folks on multiple medications, too, I felt

Chelle: I actually was not in that class. [laughter]

Julia: Oh I thought you were?

CHelle: No, I wasn't in that class. I've been busy with a ton of other things lately.

But I do-- I have known since early 2000

that it's a good idea to talk to the pharmacist and not talk to doctors. Because I worked someplace where clients were taking medications, and they said back then,

you know, the doctors will prescribe things with that, not talking crap, okay, it just happens. They-- one doctor will prescribe this Med and another doctor will prescribe this med. And sometimes they they bounce up against each other. And so the best thing for us to do when working with these clients and picking up prescriptions was to ask the pharmacist, how do these work together? What side effects can come in? Ototoxicity is and it's not going to come out right.

Sorry, I'm watching the ASR, the automatic captions, um, it's been on my radar for a long time, but I have not had an issue with it. It's not the reason for my hearing loss, but it's a good thing for people check out their medications. Because if you have you

hearing loss. You don't want to take something that's going to take your hearing loss down further. So I do advise checking prescriptions and talking to the pharmacist. Don't panic.

Don't panic. It doesn't happen. I think it's like less than 20% of the time, but it's good to know, and it's good to check out.

Julia: especially if you're in a situation where maybe the doctors don't know why you're having more hearing loss, they can't pin it down. That's a good time to have a discussion with your pharmacist, go over all your medications and and go through the pros and cons, and is there something else you could be taking that would not cause it? Maybe, maybe there's something less drug interactive.

We're not trying to scare anybody. It just was a great conversation that led to knowledge that you know, sometimes Chelle and I think people know and find out they don't know. So we want you to get in the know. Check out your medications today, and if you have questions, remember, talk with your doctors. Make sure all your doctors know what you're taking. That's that's key, because that can key in a doctor to call a pharmacist too, by the way, and go over your medication list with your pharmacist. If you ever have questions, I don't care how busy they are. They are paid to help you understand medications. They spend years in school learning about these medications and the side effects. So get your money's worth. I don't care who it is, get your money's worth. Have a great holiday season. Bye!