Chronicle of a first time hearing aid user

Hi Russ,

Just read the bit on your the phone ?

Sorry, my first time of this sort of link and reading stuff backwards. I have now read most of your posts. I am so wanting things to work for you…

A big hug from Worcester.

Dear Jim,

Your comments on discomfort are interesting, I must admit I have been reaching for the painkillers most days, as ears seam to hurt lots. I have some eustation tube disfunction and new to wearing hearing aids. I agree it is unhealthy, any ideas for lotions or sprays or anything that can ease the soreness without having to reach for yet another table ?

It is NOT normal for your ears to hurt. I remember my 1st fitting well even if it was 42 years ago. I have never had issues. Something is wrong. I really do suggest a custom mold for your ears.

Take them out long enough to let your ear heal.

Hi, Eva

I don’t have any special suggestions. Different people have different pain and discomfort thresholds. I have a bone spur in one foot, a plantar’s wart on the other, a hip that’s a bit arthritic from running, a shoulder probably with calcification or torn cartilage from doing something stupid holding onto a tree branch too long while on a riding mower years ago and not letting go soon enough to avoid a serious twist or shoulder yank, a back muscle or spinal problem from decades ago (probably from straining to avoid being pinned in high school wrestling!), patches of dry, itchy skin from the autoimmune-related disease psoriasis (and I don’t want to mess around with drastic systemic treatment like mAB’s or systemic steroids, etc.). I’m lucky that my hearing aids are a delight and I usually have no awareness of wearing them. So I try to follow my own advice on everything else - just ignore what those sensory neurons are telling you - it’s evolution but you don’t have to pay attention - it doesn’t always work so well, but I think I must have a reasonably good pain threshold - when I was having a cataract operation, a nurse asked for pain on a scale of 1 to 10 of pain, where I’d want analgesic and I picked “7.” I have some serious experience with pain such as falling off a brick wall in a school yard when I was a kid and impaling my left knee on a obliquely cut ~3/4 in. diameter shrub branch that I landed on on the way down that penetrated an inch or two into my leg. I’ve been there, unfortunately, and am still dealing with relatively minor aches and pains every day and I never take any analgesics other than applying a topical ointment of a steroid and vitamin D analog to suppress itchiness and psoriatic lesions. Just mentioning to say that I’m not offering any advice on trying to deal with pain or discomfort without having some familiarity with how bad and constant it can be. But I appreciate we’re all different and different things will work or not work for different people. My own psychological perception is like a rafter being in a river and noticing that the water is starting to run faster and one can faintly hear some tremendous falls somewhere off in the distance. So my own thing is not where I am now but where I might be going in the pain department - I just hope the going-over-the-falls part is all brief and sudden and not a prolonged drop! Don’t want to sound depressed. It’s great to be alive and pretty healthy at age 73 so I really rejoice in that and consider everything else minor discomforts that just come as the price of living to a nice old age and I’m just going to keep on keeping on! - and hopefully continue collecting those cross-country dividends!

“Some days one ear is crazy itchy at various points throughout the day, but otherwise fine.”
Keeping the domes clean - clean - clean helped my itchy ears - that and experimenting with different dome sizes and materials avail thru my Audi. I cycle 7 - 10 domes and only wear them for one day. Wash once a week - all part of the routine. This helps prevent them from backing out and not wiggling so much creating that itchy feeling. I wear different size domes, and have very small twisty sensitive ear canals - fit has always been a problem. Washing them after daily use is an easy thing you can try. I use a small jar and baby wash. Easy. Just make sure they are completely dry before replacing.

Ewa, I also have a tendency towards allergic reaction in my ear canals to foreign materials. While I tolerate the shiny, flesh-toned plastic molds very well, I have some irritation with my current, gray silicone power domes - and FORGET about wearing any clear or pink-tinted hard plastic “hypo-allergenic” mold in my ear.

My suggestion would be to buy a UV sterilizer to hold your aids in at night - something along the lines of this11 at Amazon. These small, travel-sized devices will kill all the bacteria that could be on your aids. In addition to which: WASH your hands before handling the aids and inserting them in your ear canal. In fact, I even bring alcohol wipe pads for service appt’s with my aud-guy. I love him, but he has a habit of wiping his nose, or putting a finger in his mouth and then passing me my AIDS. Crikey! I’m a bit of a germaphobe anyway, and why go looking for trouble.

If you have irritation, best thing would be to remove the aids till your ear canals heal. If you have otitis, you’ll need to put medicated drops in the ear till the condition is gone. Good luck to you, cuz the last thing we want is to NOT be able to wear our aids. It’s not a perfect world tho, and bacteria is ever-present.

@1Bluejay said:

In fact, I even bring alcohol wipe pads for service appt’s with my aud-guy.

I’ve noticed with my Quattro’s the manual advises against using alcohol wipe pads as it says it will degrade the plastic components or the coatings on them - although my audi uses them on the domes themselves and supplied me with a bunch of wipes! I have used a spray bottle of the Oaktree product “Hearing Aid Spray,” available on Amazon for about $8 for 4 oz. I spray enough of the stuff on a very small wipe to dampen it and clean my domes with that. The product claims not to damage any hearing aid component (but not to wet anything where water is to be avoided). It’s apparently an aqueous solution with Diethylene Glycol Monobutyl Ether (Yikes!) as a detergent/solvent in the water - sound like anti-freeze! The AudioWipes by the same company, which contain benzalkonium chloride, a detergent and antiseptic compound, in an aqueous solution, are also a popular hearing aid product on Amazon but a bit expensive for me. If you look up any of their products on their web site and look at the SDS (Safety Data Sheet), one can find a list of any chemicals that might be of any safety concern, e.g., even an alcohol-containing product would have an SDS as an 18-wheeler full of the stuff could be a safety or environmental concern if it were involved in a wreck.

Oaktree Products - Wholesale clinical supplies for Audiologists3

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Nice thread, I routinely turn my aids on or off, and fiddle with the volume, depending on noise levels.

If someone turns up the speakerphone too loud in a meeting, the aids go off.

I use a headset when on the phone at work, also a good time to turn them off, but I leave them in, I can hear ok (not great) with them in and off.

I suspect when my hearing degrades more, I won’t be turning them off as much, but that’s a few years out I think.

Hi All,

Just an update now that I’m 3 months down the track. I have been on holidays the last 4 weeks, mainly spending time at home, and wear8ng my aids only when I go out, so I’m a bit rusty on opinions, but here we go.

Wearing the aids has become fairly routine now. As you know, work has been my priority, and there it has helped greatly. About 2 months in I accidentally forgot them one day and boy, did I come to realsie just what a differnece they had made. I went from a world where I didn’t think about my hearing much anymore, to suddenly going back to listening with my head in a garbage bin. That was a bad day, and made me realise just how bad my hearing is and that I didn’t fully appreciate the difference they could make before I got them.

Now, having said how wonderful they are, even for my mild loss, here’s the caveats.

1. Noisy restaurants and parties are still a problem. While better, trying to listen to an individual in a crowded room is still difficult.

2. While most of the time I forget I have them in, there are still days they itch and drive me crazy and nothing much seems to make it stop. There’s also no pattern. Next day they can be fine again with no obvious changes.

3. I am also still having to poke them back in regularly as they slide out. As a matter of fact, one day at home I wasn’t wearing my aids, but I still found myself sticking my finger in my ear, trying to push them back in! Seems I’ve developed a habit

4. Bluetooth with more than one device is annoyingly annoying. Keeping the connection, swapping between devices, and just working consistently doesn’t happen. If only ever 1 device, it works fine, but it’s a puzzzle game of switching things on and off when I move between my office phone, my mobile phone, my iPad and my car.

5. The most curious thing of the lot. As mentioned previously, I have a bluetooth device on my office phone, which connects to my aids through the Oticon ConnectClip. Took me a couple weeks to work this one out, but would you believe, when I blow my nose, it makes my phone ring? It’s true, I kid you not.

The MDA220 device makes a ringing sound in my aids, and a green “call” light lights up on it when a phone call comes in. That also happens when I blow my nose. But not only when I blow my nose. Any sudden loud noise will cause the same behaviour. There seems ot be some feedback loop from I assume the ConnectClip mic being overdriven, and that signal back to the MDA220 somehow triggers and incoming call response. No idea how, but it does.

6. Finally, sometimes the boosted background noises can just end up being too much. My work airconditioner is constant background white noise which sometimes still drives me crazy. Lucky the hearing aides mute function restore blissful ignorance when it’s just too much, but I can’t use it too often as I’m never completely alone for that long. Some other environments can be similarly annoying sometimes (road noise when deiving for example), but the office air conditioner is there every day. I wonder if this is my only mistake in going for the base Opn model. Maybe the better noise reduction on the upper models would have helped better hear, but I’ve made my choice for many years now, so I’ll have to live with it.

Overall, I’m happy with my aids. I’ll continue to work on the comfort features, but I’ve had no real need to visit my audiologist again, when I am surprised with, and basically use the one main setting on the Opn for everything, unless I just feel like playing around.

So there you have it. Bar any unforseen issues arriving, I don’t think Ikll have much more to report here, but may pop by occasionally for. Quick progress report. Hope this has been helpful to some others entering the aorld of Hearing Aids.

@Russ said:

I am also still having to poke them back in regularly as they slide out.

You need custom molds.