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Is my hearing really that bad?

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Edited

Hello All,

I do wear hearing aids and have been wearing them for about 5 years or so. I wear them generally from 0700 - 2100 every day and adore the moment I take them out in the evening.

However, is my hearing really that bad? I do recognize that in background noise, I struggle and also if I don’t see peoples mouths it’s hard.

Looking at my audio gram, would you say I miss a lot? I suppose I just would like some independent review of my audio gram.

Thanks.

14 people in this conversation9 min readJump to latest

Your right ear is a bit better than mine, but unless you start a career as a hermit, get imprisoned in a solitary cell for life or retire to a privately owned paradise’s island I would say, wear those even if you do not like them…

Your hearing loss isn’t balanced like mine. But you do need your aids. Most of all for your left ear. Your left ear is fairly close to both of mine. I wear my aids every waking mine of my day except for showers. I can’t go without them. I have been wearing aids for 20 years. How do you feel about your audiologist? Your audiologist is the key to your comfort with hearing aids. Also you absolutely need a custom ear mold for your left ear. I have always demanded custom ear molds or custom in the ear aids.

Thank you for the replies.

Robfoot, I do wear the hearing aids, in a big part down to my wonderful audiologist. My work environment is very quiet and so I can generally make out what people say, especially if they sit on my right side. I will wear them especially as my audiologist does look at the average daily wear time statistics and discusses that with me. However, as I show 10+ hours of usage, she’s happy.

Cvkemp, completely agree about the audiologist. My audiologist walked me through exactly what I needed and why. Immediately she said that we’d have to get a custom mold for the left ear. Whenever, I’ve had an appointment she’s always addressed my concerns and can almost anticipate my questions.

I know that I need my hearing aids and I do wear them, I suppose I do still resent them and though no one has every noticed them, I guess I’m still embarrassed by the need for them.

I guess no one is going to validate my thought my hearing isn’t that bad and I don’t need them.

@Bermuda said:

I guess no one is going to validate my thought my hearing isn’t that bad and I don’t need them.

Yep, you need hearing aids if you want to engage in conversation with the living.

The question is: why are you choosing to be embarrassed?

Do you find yourself asking people to repeat themselves? Do you find yourself withdrawing from conversations because you can’t hear everything to follow it properly? Do you find yourself nodding and smiling politely because you didn’t actually hear what was said? Do you find yourself looking out the window because you can’t be bothered to ask to have things repeated and so you’re just not really present?

I don’t think anyone here would say they like having to wear and needing hearing aids. Vanity, cost, embarrassment of age and needing them.

I don’t like needing them at all. They’re a hassle. But it’s more of a hassle to not hear the spouse properly or other conversations.
I don’t like the expense every now and again.
I don‘t care about the vanity part therefor no embarrassment. I have a grey/white beard so my age is hinted at anyway.

Hearing aids or not can be a judgement call, Bermuda.

Instead of going by what and testing say, make your decision on what you want from your hearing.

Suppose you had the worst audiogram in the world, but were happy with your un-assisted hearing; why wear devices? Conversely, you may have a near perfect audiogram, but can’t hear or can’t understand what you wish without devices, then wear the devices.

Keep in mind, however, that not addressing hearing problems can exacerbate the existing problems on a physiological level. Being born with hearing loss, I skipped aids for many decades. This made the hearing problem worse than if I had worn them all along. (Until well into adulthood, there was not a device capable of helping. Later in life, cost got in the way.)

As far as being embarrassed & hearing aids showing your age: Does it matter? Is it a bad thing to be older? People can get all the Botox, use all the wrinkle creams and wear all the make up and use all the hair dye in the world- Age is age. Nobody’s fooled. (And why waste time caring if someone knows you are old?)

Also keep in mind that many very young people wear hearing aids or have Cochlear implants.
If you wore eye glasses or had a cast on your arm, would you be ashamed? Of course not.

If people think less of you because you have hearing aids, do you really want to associate with such tiny-minded people?

To summarize:
Is your benefit in hearing more important than the fuss of wearing devices and the (perceived) shame of having hearing loss?

Just my thoughts…
Paul

In reply to @Bermuda

@Bermuda said:

I will wear them especially as my audiologist does look at the average daily wear time statistics and discusses that with me.

Does knowing that we are monitoring actually make people wear them more? I’ll take it, even though it makes me feel like weird big brother. Well done on 10+ hours. :dizzy:

I have had one of my audiologist back when I started wearing aids 20 years ago tell e to take a break from my aids. I know back then my aids were dumb as they didn’t even have controls for volume and only had the base settings and no real programs. When I decided to get aids I decided to wear them every awake moment of the day. I have done that for 20 years. I was very nervous at first about rechargeable aids as I was afraid they wouldn’t last the whole day. But I haven’t had an issue with low battery life. I do stream a lot, I don’t watch much TV but I do read over 100 books a year.

I don’t know if there are benefits to breaks or how we might go about trying to measure that. In children, good language outcomes are strongly and directly correlated with wear time, so the refrain is “eyes open, ears on".

I have pretty much always worn my hearing aids from the moment I get out of the shower until I go to bed at night. Even with my first aid which was a single for one ear only.

I have spent a lot of time and money on my aids and getting them set up, it makes sense to me to get the most out of them that I can.

Jim

Edited

In reply to @cvkemp

@cvkemp said:

I do read over 100 books a year.

Indeed- all are also great when simply taken off, to better enjoy good books.

But note that books are completely last millennium, with most people now preferring to hang out with fellow dimwits in the dimly lit, noisy echo chambers of the internet. I feel old…

I was more embarrassed when I caught myself saying “What?” ALL.THE.TIME.

if you find a moment where it’s going to be quiet during your day take them out for say an hour or so.

Sometimes just removing them mid-day and cleaning the (domes or molds) will help me as well

In reply to @RobHooft

You don’t understand I read along with audio books or with text ro speech, so I am streaming the book to my aids as I am reading the text. It helps me recognize words that I normally would not understand if I heard them

Thanks everyone for the excellent and helpful replies. Lots of points to think about.

I think that the embarrassment, and I know this is completely wrong, is not in the general day to day, it’s within the cultural heritage I’m from. Logically I know it makes no sense, and I should be ‘modeling’ to the community that hearing aids aren’t an issue, but being brought up so deeply in that community makes doing that difficult.

With regards to my audiologist being big brother, it’s not at all like that. After my , she told me that we’d be seeing each other for a long time and that she needed to know what I needed to make me comfortable on my hearing journey, and that there really wasn’t any wrong questions, requests, etc. The review of the daily hearing time is just another metric to see whether I’m comfortable wearing them. It’s almost like a standing joke now, that we’ll be reviewing it, but as I’m 10 + hours a day I’m good.

I’ve noticed that once my hearing dropped below a certain level, I stopped going to the cinema and watching TV. I read a lot more and that’s good thing and hopefully my kids seeing me reading, will help them keep up their reading too. I wish I could enjoy audiobooks, I just end up zoning out and even if I try and read along with them, the pacing is never right. I tried it with Crime and Punishment and also Grapes of Wrath. Unfortunately audiobooks don’t work for me. I do enjoy seeing the words on the page so it’s good.

That is much like my wife. She is a voracious reader, but prefers only books. I love audiobooks and go through a one or more each week and have for the last 25 years.

I used to be a book reader, but now I only read a book if I can’t find the title I want on audio.

I love how streaming the audiobook through my hearing aids makes makes listening crystal clear. I can understand everyword.:slightly_smiling_face:

In reply to @Bermuda

Sounds like you have a good audiologist.

@Bermuda said:

being brought up so deeply in that community makes doing that difficult.

Kindle your rebellious spirit. :wink: Screw oppressive cultural norms. What is right and good is superior to what is traditional. :sign_of_the_horns:

In reply to @Bermuda

@Bermuda

Thanks for posting. Reading your remarks and responses here have helped me. My explanation. I just started a new post labouring with words, failing and threw my post away.

Found your post, read my way into it. The answers here have helped me. I’m completely dependent on my hearing aids. I wear them all my waking hours. But they haven’t fixed my hearing.

DaveL

Hi there, you definitely will benefit from using the hearing aids all the time. It is to improve your communication, hence your mental health, and of course, your day-to-day life. But also, it helps with your brain and cognitive health. Take a look at this article to see the that shows how the reverse shift happens in your auditory cortex when using hearing aids: https://www.hearingnow.co.uk/learning/research-update-a-new-hypothesis-for-understanding-cognitive-decline9

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