Pain while using new type of hearing aid

@Kuba795 said:

All hearing aids need to be turned up very loudly to start with.

If you’ve been in hearing aids since you were 2 you need DSL child targets. If you’re being put into adult targets it makes sense that you are wanting to turn them up. You need DSL child, real-ear measures. If you’ve moved from your original pediatric audiologist to some other clinician, that may have been why the ‘older generation’ suited you better.

@Kuba795 said:

Does anyone have any ideas on how to solve my problem and which direction to take? I’m wondering if, for example, a full-shell earmold would be a good solution for my hearing loss?

The pain is harder and it something you’ll have to work through with your clinician probably. Have you HAD the pain with a full shell mold? A lot of people with congenital hearing loss do like to stay with a full shell mold for richness of sound and comfort. You might need to do some sleuthing to figure out what is causing the discomfort. For example, pain in the ear caused by a mold pressing on a sensitive area of the ear canal may be resolvable with physical changes or open/moving jaw earmolds, and this sort of pain can radiate around/behind the ear too. But there could be some sort of neuralgia behind the ear. Sounds like it is both ears. Can you put other things behind your ears? Glasses? Does the hearing aid cause pain turned off and removed from the mold and just propped behind the ear? Identifying the exact source of the pain can be a bit of a process.

@Kuba795 said:

I wonder why the older generation of hearing aids suited me both in terms of sound and didn’t cause pain.

Could it be something physical has changed with your ears? As we age, tissue becomes thinner, so maybe there is less cushioning in your ears now to support the BTE or RIC.

I get pain from RICs with the squishy silicone power dome on them. That’s cuz the dome doesn’t provide enough of a cushion over the pointy, hard matchstick speaker unit. I’ve just switched to using custom molded titanium tips for my speakers, and while they take work to get them into my swollen ear canals each morning, they stay PUT and fit beautifully. If you are pushing your speakers into your ear all day long, that can cause pain. Or you may have allergies to materials used, which can cause a fiery or dull pain where the material comes in contact with your ear.

It’s not like the aids of today are bigger or heavier, so I’m guessing it’s some physical attribute of your ear that has become more sensitive and tender wearing aids. Is there inflammation where the pain is? If so, it’s skin-related dermititis, if not, it’s a physical structure issue. Good luck sleuthing this, and let us know if you can pinpoint the cause.

I’ve had skeleton ear mold for a few years now. I don’t remember what they were like when I was younger.

I’ve just ordered full-shell insoles to see if that might be the problem. They’re supposed to arrive next week.

I started wondering, that I simply prefer more sound from the hearing aid rather than from the surroundings, then a full shell ear mold could actually be better.