Emergencies happen. This month alone, the country has seen floods, tornados, wildfires, terrorist attacks, not to mention power outages, water-main breaks, and a host of other catastrophes. It was also the 15^th anniversary of 9/11, which ushered in a new era of emergency awareness.

The definition of “emergency” is “an unexpected and usually dangerous situation that calls for immediate action.” That means you need to be prepared.

For people with hearing loss, the preparations go beyond the usual.

Everyone should have an emergency plan. New York City Emergency Management suggests essential elements of an emergency plan on its website.

NYCEM also has a site for emergency planning for people with disabilities.

And everyone should have an emergency kit. The Red Cross suggests what you need in your emergency kit.

Last week the New York City Chapter of the Hearing Loss Association of America hosted a presentation on emergency planning for the deaf and hard of hearing. Two representatives of NYCEM offered information about basic emergency planning. Jeffry Adelman, who has Meniere’s disease with severe hearing loss, is a volunteer with NYCEM and he offered some specific thoughts for adults with hearing loss.

He began by stressing the usefulness of what he called “legacy technologies.” These include good old pen and paper for communicating with friends, family and emergency workers if you do not have access to your hearing aid or cochlear implant. Beethoven, who was profoundly deaf in his later years, left 150 notebooks full of his communications with people he couldn’t hear.

Another legacy technology is a landline telephone. Even when cell phones, internet, power and everything else goes, a landline, which relies on underground cables, may still work.

For those with hearing loss, emergency kits, like those specified above, also need to include extra batteries and chargers to keep your hearing aids, cochlear implants and assistive listening systems safe and working. Hearing aid batteries are usually disposable, so make sure you have several packets of back up batteries.

Make sure you have a sealed waterproof container in your emergency kit, for your hearing aid or cochlear implant. The bag or container should be big enough for extra batteries, chargers, and assistive listening devices. Don’t forget to include your medications, written copies of your medical information, your prescriptions, and your driver’s license and passport.

Cochlear implants are more of a challenge. They work on rechargeable batteries, which generally last at most about eight hours. This is where a portable battery charger – or two, if you want to be extra careful – may be useful.  The chargers themselves need to be charged, however, so be sparing in how you use them.

Don’t forget your car as a power source. Even when all other power is out, your car (depending on model, and as long as you have gas) will have some power for charging things like a cochlear implant battery pack, your cell phone, and so on. These will be charged through the USB port, not a conventional wall plug.

Flashlights, a must in anyone’s emergency kit, are especially important for the hard of hearing. If it’s dark, you may need a flashlight to help in reading lips.

If cellular phone service is still working, you might want to use your smart phone to access Facebook’s Safety Check feature. Safety Check allows Facebook to notify you in the event of a disaster in your area and ask if you’re safe. You click the “I’m safe” button and the message will go to your Facebook network. Facebook can also give you a list of friends who might be affected by the disaster. Facebook is selective in the disasters it covers with Safety Check, and has been criticized for implementing it in some disasters and not others, but it’s still a good way for the deaf and hard of hearing to check on friends and relatives.

If you live in an area where tornados, hurricanes, floods, landslides or other natural disasters are not infrequent, you may want a NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) weather-alert radio. These come in all price ranges and a variety can be found by Googling “weather alert radio.” If you are deaf or hard of hearing, you can activate a warning light. Some weather alert radios have an LCD screen for alerts.

You can also sign on to alerts issued by your community. In New York, the city’s official emergency notification system: NotifyNYC, can be modified for the kinds of alerts you want to receive.

Finally, and this applies to anyone who lives alone, whether or not you have impaired hearing: Form a support network – ask two or three friends, neighbors, coworkers to be in your network. You don’t want to go through an emergency alone.

Your network partners should make a plan to stay in contact during an emergency. You might exchange house keys. Your network partners should know your medical conditions and needs, and where to find emergency and medical supplies.

As the Boy Scouts taught us, Be Prepared.

Katherine Bouton is the author of “Living Better With Hearing Loss: A Guide to Health, Happiness, Love, Sex, Work, Friends … and Hearing Aids,” and a memoir, “Shouting Won’t Help: Why I — and 50 Million Other Americans — Can’t Hear You”. Both available on Amazon.com.

Sunday after next (September 25) is New York City’s Walk4Hearing. This is a fundraising* event but, more important, it’s also a way to stand up for people with hearing loss. We expect hundreds of participants of all ages, who represent the millions of Americans of all ages with hearing loss. Other Walks will take place during the year across the country.

This year’s Walk, in the words of HLAA Executive Director Barbara Kelley, is a Call to Action for Communication Access. “Ask for something you need to help you with your hearing loss. If you tweet, post it on Twitter@Walk4Hearing using #CommAccess.”

Here are some suggestions:

• At the movies, ask for the captioning devices now mandated at all chain theaters. Ask the manager to help you set it up and to make sure it’s captioning the right movie. Take a picture of yourself with the device and tweet it!
• At the theater or at a lecture, ask the manager or the concierge desk what kind of assistive listening devices they have. And then use them. Some also have captioning devices. And check out TDF-TAP’s special open-captioned performances.
• At meetings, classes, or on the phone, speak up if you’re struggling. There are some easy fixes, especially if you wear hearing aids with telecoils. All you have to do is ask for them. In my experience, you may be surprised by the quick and positive response you’ll get.
• At a store, ask store clerks or cashiers to speak clearly, or to write down the price or other information. If it’s a store you use frequently, especially a chain, ask them to install the kind of cash registers that show you what you owe. You can also ask them to install a portable loop system at the information desk, the register and/or the pharmacy counter.
• At a place of worship, ask about installing an assistive listening system. Go armed with this information from the Hearing Loss Association of America.
• At an exercise class, ask the teacher to wear the transmitter for a personal FM system.  Your audiologist can suggest the best system for you.

If you’re still wondering why you should speak up, I encourage you to read my colleague Shari Ebert’s blog post “Why Hearing Loss Advocacy is So Important.”

Many of us have had different kinds of successful experiences asking for accommodations. Please share yours in the comments section below.

*If you would like to make a donation to the WALK, to help support HLAA’s many important advocacy and educational initiatives, support our advocacy by joining or contributing to the Walk4Hearing. If you’d like to support the Walk in my name (I have not yet met my fundraising goal!) click on my name and then move your curser to the right and click on Donate. Better yet, come walk with us.

Katherine Bouton is the author of “Living Better With Hearing Loss: A Guide to Health, Happiness, Love, Sex, Work, Friends … and Hearing Aids,” and a memoir, “Shouting Won’t Help: Why I — and 50 Million Other Americans — Can’t Hear You”. Both available on Amazon.com.

I am not Deaf and not a sign language user, but I am extremely hard of hearing and I know how frightening it can be when the police pull you over and you’re unsure you’ll be able to und…

Source: Driving While Deaf: Not Taking My Own Advice.

One of the dangerous side effects of hearing loss is isolation. You have trouble hearing in social gatherings, so you tend to say home. Isolation can lead to depression, and depression is a risk factor for cognitive decline. Cognitive decline can end up being dementia.

You can’t cure hearing loss, but you can treat it. The most direct way is with hearing aids, but sometimes hearing aids aren’t enough to make socializing easy, and so the threat of isolation, depression, cognitive decline and dementia is still there.

Here’s another way to treat hearing loss: Get a dog!

I don’t mean a service dog — though they can be very useful for people with hearing loss. I mean a pet.

I’ve always liked long walks, and for years I distracted myself over three- or four-mile jaunts with recorded books. I listened to everything from Moby-Dick and Anna Karenina to novels by Carl Hiaasen and Elmore Leonard.

But then I went deaf. Or, more accurately, my hearing declined to the point where I could no longer hear with headphones. I had sometimes walked with friends, but around the same time they dropped away for one reason or another. I was often left walking with my thoughts. Nothing wrong with that. Sometimes I’d even take a notepad along in case I thought of something particularly brilliant.

But thinking — brilliant thoughts or not — was not enough to get me out day after day. So I got a dog, a puppy. At first I was out four or five or six times a day, for short puppy-relief walks. As he got older, we resumed my long morning walk.

A dog is not for everyone. Weather is no deterrent to a dog’s need for a walk, as you can see in the picture of my dog Maxie on a sub-zero day. If you are unsteady on wintry days, you might want to consider a small dog. Or even a cat.

I like all kinds of weather, and I appreciate the push out the door on a cold day. A dog prompts conversations with strangers, and over the years I’ve made new friends, whom I know mostly by their dogs’ names, and a slew of casual acquaintances. It’s easy for me to hear in the open air, and I often have conversations at the dog park, or sometimes stopping for a chat mid-walk. We would talk about dogs at first, but as time went on, some of my dog friends became real friends, and then we talked about everything.

Plus, a pet has other health benefits. It can lower your blood pressure and cholesterol, says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and — thanks to its boundless, unconditional love — help reduce your stress. Also, dog owners get more exercise than non-pet owners, and the physical activity helps older dog walkers have greater mobility inside their homes than others, according to studies funded by the National Institutes of Health.

I miss listening to recorded books, but on the other hand, walks with my dog have helped me become much more aware of the sights around me — cherry trees in the spring, branches glittering with ice in the winter, a hawk soaring, a raccoon in the crook of a tree — and the sounds as well, including conversation.

A baby probably would have the same result — everyone talks to parents with babies — but I’ve had my babies, and my babies are not yet ready to have babies of their own. So for now I enjoy the benefits of a different kind of child — a furry, four-legged one.

Katherine Bouton is the author of “Living Better With Hearing Loss: A Guide to Health, Happiness, Love, Sex, Work, Friends … and Hearing Aids,” and a memoir, “Shouting Won’t Help: Why I — and 50 Million Other Americans — Can’t Hear You”. Both available on Amazon.com.

This essay first appeared on AARP Health, August 17, 2016.