My grandmother is losing her hearing. She's been losing it for years, but either can't or won't accept it. Who can blame her? It is not so easy a thing to come to terms with your once strong body failing on you. If you are 40 possibly you recall a vigour of 18 that's now on vacation and which you miss with creaking fondness. Remember the vigour of 40 when you're pushing your 82nd birthday.

The problem is made worse by her being an inattentive and somewhat scatterbrained person. She has always inflated volumes beyond the necessary, because the louder something is the less active her attention had to be. It's made being around her aurally painful at times.

She does not hear ticking clocks, nor realise that her incessant fidgeting produces sound.

I think the most frustrating part of it is not that she doesn't hear, nor that she doesn't turn her head when I speak, it's that blank look when I speak to her as she's facing me - as if I've said nothing at all. Sometimes she just turns her head and goes on with some other activity, and sometimes she just starts talking about something that has nothing to do with what I've said to her.

It would be a tad less frustrating if the rest of my head-in-the-sand family would actually admit that something's wrong, and if her doctor would stop telling her that nothing's amiss. When she has hearing tests she is paying attention, straining even, so she hears all the beeps.