Sadness - committing to wearing hearing aids and saying goodbye to my natural hearing

LOL. It’s not that I “actively” shut down my hearing when concentrating! Yeah, I’d LOVE to hear someone talking to me as I do banking, texting or something that requires near total concentration.

I’m guessing that my ol’ gray cells simply can’t process TWO intense things at once: 1.) speech comprehension on a topic completely unrelated to what I’m doing and 2.) what I’m doing that requires a lot of concentration.

It’s frustrating and exhausting. And I’ve had equal measure of BOTH today while simultaneously doing a speaker phone call with family as I’m bangin’ out searches for VRBOs and ferries for a trip … that fell flat on its face after all that work.

Thank you for the reply @neroth8… I would love to hear the sound of silence, unfortunately I have severe Tinnitus, although I learned to control this over many years of practice, but I am unable to completely eradicate the white noise as it’s always in the background, on the positive side, if it gets extremely loud, then this alerts me, and I know I am unwell with some dreaded lurgy… Most days, I tend to leave my aids out for several hours, especially if there is no one around, my wife signs (BSL) as I do, I have been also trained in lip reading, it’s not an exact science, with only 30% of all words clearly distinguishable on the lips, but it is an advantage to have, to aid any communication… Most people are very resilient, they adapt to whatever life throws at them, hearing loss is no different in that respect, other senses are raised, our eyes become our ears, we tend to look for visual clues, eye contact is very important, facial expression, and body language give us many clues, perhaps more than the actual contextual information? Although, all this concentration can be very, very tiring, if it’s a prolonged affair, like say a party, in loud noise we will always struggle, and sometimes we become totally exhausted, and we have to go… Personally, I have probably went down the wrong road on way too numerous occasions, when I misheard or misinterpreted a key word in conversations, much too my embarrassment… Cheers Kev

Quiz night in the pub tonight. Hopefully my new HA’s will improve on hearing the questions. I often put the Roger On on the question masters table to help further. Like you Kevels55, I’m pretty ascertive. Taking my backup ones which I’ve tweaked in Target.

Peter

Good on you Peter… I recall many years ago, I was on a 5 day risk assessment course, watching paint dry would have been more exciting I was rigid with extreme boredom, the Tutor as I recall had a very mundane voice, half the battle was staying awake! Back then, I had a FM system, paid for via “Access to Work”, I usually asked the Tutor to wear the FM mic prior to the course starting, they always obliged… But, on that occasion,I would have gladly done without any I am thinking about the Roger On v2 Peter, Roger On v1 is very good, but the v2 is reputed to be very good in noise, one of the problems with the v1 I find is, it’s excellent as long as the background noise isn’t too loud, anything other, then I struggle! I saw the Roger On v2 on Connevans for around £650 today, if you sign the VAT waver… I will wait and see what like the new Phonak Naida Lumity is, in October/November before I decide… I hope the quiz went well

@1Bluejay said:

hence my excellent (and necessary!) backup pair.

I’m considering getting the same now that I have given over to wearing them 100% - did you just buy full price for a second pair of the same?

Thank you @1Bluejay… My moulds/molds have no vents whatsoever, and as such my ears sweat, I am allergic to silicone, although the moulds are nano coated with a hypoallergenic coating… Most of the time wearing my aids, they are not exactly uncomfortable, it’s more a preference to leaving them out, as opposed to the slight discomfort of having them in, I don’t know if that makes sense? Probably not, my wife is always telling me, I’m so contrary Perhaps, I shall ask for acrylic full shell BTE moulds, when I see my A.uD in October/November, I am planning a new set of Naida Lumity around then… I never go out without my aids in though, but I don’t go out often nowadays, I’m morphing into a bit of a recluse Cheers Kev

@user172 said:

did you just buy full price for a second pair of the same?

No I actually got the 2nd pair with a 15% discount, as I bought them just a month later. It seems extravagant, but for the first time in my 68 yrs, I have identical aids for use + backup. Up till then, the older (backup) pair would actually be significantly different in terms of program lineup, streaming and audio quality.