Digital ears round three and What a drag it is getting old!

No secret to my family members and co-workers that I have some hearing loss. Really, really planned on getting some hearing aids last summer but then a nasty root canal came and took all my money set aside for health care so had to wait until 2010 to try again.

So last week I bit the bullet and went back to a place for some testing etc. I walked out with a demo pair to try for a few days. So far, not so good.

I do hear better but I also hear stuff out of sync. Things are delayed. Music sounds awful. Anything with a ring or tone to it is just odd.

So back to the aid place. They hooked me up to a computer at the manufacturer in Minnesota and they made adjustments right in my ear while I sat here in Springburg. Seems that most people just lose their hearing so any type of assistance sounds great so they are happy to get what they can get. Me on the other hand may have become the high maintenance customer they wished had never walked in their door!

I hear low frequencies just fine (that would be lots of noise, traffic, HVAC - you'd be amazed at how much happens in low freqs!) Seems that stuff hits my real ears on time while the super fast digital hearing aids take that same sound and process it in 5ms (that is 5 milliseconds). Well that 5 milliseconds can be an eternity when you've already heard the sound! Think Taylor Swift with Stevie Nicks!

Another adjustment to dial out some low frequencies. This does make things better but then this morning I woke up, put them on and everything was delayed again.

Back in for another adjustment this afternoon. They have no idea how a digitally programmed digital device "drifted" overnight but there are no consumer adjustments I can make that can affect this.

They did more adjusting on the low end of things, put a smaller ear bud on the wire (seems there is something called "occlusion"), tweaked my own voice a little - actually they are tweaking what I sound like to myself. Maybe my voice already is annoying but I told the guy today if I really sounded like my hearing aids made me sound, I'm way more than annoying.

For now I have these tiny little things hanging off the back of my ears and a little wire snaking around my ear into my ear canal.

The AID guy says a lot of this is retraining my brain since I'm hearing stuff I haven't been hearing so it has to figure things out. But let me tell you the process gives me a headache! I never dreamed it would be this hard.

Comments

  1. this made me laugh... not because of your troubles though. i love you and i hope it gets better!!! if it makes you feel any better my ears ring pretty bad in the morning... (i thank my genes) ... =)

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