How’s your social life? How much words do you understand

Yeah well your not alone in having trouble with noisy environments, common issue for everybody, your hearing loss is not so bad, most HAs can offer improvements, what models are you using at the moment, are you fitted with domes or moulds?

Your audiogram is not much different from mine. With my hearing aids, I have no problem with my social life. Prior to that, it was a problem. If you don’t have them, you need to look into getting a pair. It has made an enormous difference for me.

In terms of social life, I do consider background noise and ability to hear and avoid certain situations if I can. I have a moderate/severe cookie bite loss which cuts through a lot of speech so either I’m doing a lot of guesswork and nodding/smiling at what seems to be the right points or I’m basically the guy nobody wants to speak to. Neither are particularly good options or much like fun for me or anyone else. As someone with lifelong hearing loss, I’m rather adept at doing things on my own!

With hearing aids I can function in moderate background noise but I decline offers to go out to busy restaurants and bars etc unless it would be rude ( eg a family celebration). Likewise with work events. Currently I use Phonak hearing aids, well KS10s from Costco which do a fair job in most surroundings with tweaks in the smartphone app. I use a Roger device which helps somewhat. Spheres do seem to be closer to achieving the Nirvana of clarity in background noise, but with a daughter off to university this year, dropping a few grand on new HAs isn’t in the cards. But even with lots of tech, I find social events particularly draining because of the concentration required.