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New hearing aid wearer - I hate the way they feel in my ear

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Hi everyone. I am new to this forum and to hearing aids. I was recently diagnosed with moderate hearing loss in the mid-frequency range. Today I got hearing aids for the first time - I am 27 years old. While I am overwhelmed a bit by how many sounds I am hearing now, my biggest problem is that I truly despise the way they feel in my ear canal. I have Phonak Audeo B-R aids, they are behind the ear with the little tube that wraps around the top of my ear and inserts into the ear canal. I can’t stand the way the part in my ear canal feels. I want to yank it out after wearing the hearing aids for 5 minutes. Is this normal/will I get used to it? Or are they perhaps fitted wrong? Anyone else experience this? Thanks.

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As a 2 week newbie myself, I had the same feeling. Like someone tickling the inside my ear with a feather. I kept pulling the aid out of the ear canal and itching the hell out of the canal. But it DOES get better with each passing day. I’m at the point now that I really don’t notice them at all. I think your body just needs to get used to having a foreign object in the ear canal and it will desensitize the irritations you are feeling now.

mention it to your clinician - if its unbearable could try a small sleeve mould on the end of the tube. sometimes they don’t feel quite as ‘tickly’ as a dome - but in most cases this uncomfortable feeling does ease in time

Welcome to the forums @sharonrenee352. I will say despite wearing hearing aids 30 years I understand this feeling usually I get it with new molds just due to the change. It will take a week or two and hopefully you won’t notice it. I’ve found it best to ignore that itchy feeling at first as if I focus on it i tend to want to scratch the itch making it more noticable do bear in mind it may also be that your not used to things being in the ear full time as well as I’ve found the itchy tickly feeling can also be a buildup of moisture from full time wear. I have this happen if I use Ear buds listen I to music too.

if it doesn’t disspate do talk to your Audi sometimes it’s trying different domes/molds but this is day one for you so it is a leaning curve for you and what feels abnormal today won’t feel so odd in a few weeks.

If you can just get your audiologist to take a look and make sure there is no inflammation/allergy happening. Hearing aid domes do give that itchy feeling but most get used to them quite quickly and can forget they are there for much of the day. Sometimes the domes or receivers are a bit big for your ear canal and can cause some trauma in the ear canal. Just tell your audiologist when you go in next. If it gets worse you could ring and see them earlier.

In reply to @LoubyLou

Thanks! It went better the second day. I almost forgot they were in at one point! I’m still having some trouble with them though - sometimes they pick up on the weirdest sound (like someone shuffling paper) and it seems like that one specific sound gets funneled through to my ear way louder than anything else. Is that even possible?

In reply to @sharonrenee352

That is normal as far as I know, for me the sound that feeds highest in quiet settings is the chinking of a glass/cup. Paper crinkling is an odd noise and actually quite noisy to me but not annoying. It could be due to your settings keep a list for new noises that even after a few weeks still irritate you I call it relearning how things sound as each new hearing aid always delivers different new sounds I hadn’t heard before, this way you’ll be able to talk to your Audi about what areas may need tweaking in settings to help. I will be having to do similar in about 2 weeks even seasoned hearing aid users have to adapt to different brands and decide what areas still need changing. Good luck I’m so glad day two is better in terms of not feeling your domes and any itches!

Your concerns about the sound and how annoying they are is something we all experience with new aids and it is magnified if you’re a new user too.

As LoubyLou said it is something we all go through. The brain serves as a filter. It mutes less important sounds. The problem is the new sounds that show up with aids isn’t in the important sound category. Over time the brain mutes them to a greater degree.

Last time for me, it was my keyboard. I type a lot. It sounded louder than Big Ben. After adopting, I barely hear key clicks.

Think back to a household fan in the summer. You notice it at the start and then it fades into the background. We wonder if it got louder but it is just our not having heard it over the winter.

We’ve all been there but from personal experience I can tell you that you will get used to it. Most days I don’t even know they are in my ears.

From another Newbie (almost 2 days now with first ’s, also Audeo BR’s), I’m really fortunate that I have managed to eliminate this degree of discomfort. Actually things have been fine and I’ve hardly noticed that I’ve had them in.

Although I had some obvious discomfort on initial fitting, I managed to alleviate it very quickly. What made the difference I believe is that my Audi gave me a tip by saying that at night, if the ear canals felt sensitive, I should apply a tiny bit of Sweet Oil - she had clearly seen my initial reaction. Well after leaving her office the first thing I did was to go get some and at home I applied a little to the opening of the ear canals and reinserted the HA’s and what a massive difference.

This morning, when I got up and inserted the HA’s the feeling was even worse than the initial fitting. So, once again I did the Sweet Oil thing and felt the same massive difference. Have worn them all day and most of the time wasn’t even aware I had anything in my ears - even to the point of occasionally having to check that they were still there. I intend using Sweet Oil on a daily basis until it is clear that I’ve fully adjusted. Try it and I hope it helps you too.

Wow, awesome tip. I’ll go and look for sweet oil at the store tomorrow. How are you doing with sound quality? I have noticed by biggest frustration has been the quality of my own voice. Sometimes my voice sounds so weird - almost like a computer voice or a voice coming from a video that’s playing on a computer. It can be so distracting that I’ve stopped mid-sentence and lost my train of thought.

In reply to @KenP

Yeah this is what my Audiologist keeps telling me too. It’s just hard to imagine that those sounds will actually get quieter, but I suppose I will just have to have some faith. It’s been tough to go about the whole day with those sounds coming in so loud, I feel so distractable and just ‘off’ the entire day.

In reply to @sharonrenee352

On the sound side of things I’ve had no issues. Certainly there is a really impressive difference now in my hearing and many things sound LOUDER (I even clearly hear my own footsteps). But this has not been to a point of serious distraction or irritation. Maybe it’s just an expectation thing for me? I expected / hoped for a real improvement and accept that some things I don’t want to be louder, will be louder.

I like the many comments above about needing an adjustment period for the brain to re-order what it pays attention to and what it shunts aside as unimportant.

Hope you settle in well with your new ears - I’m really enjoying mine so far and with further fine-tuning look forward to further improvements. I just have an issue with my ComPilot II link on incoming calls and have put a post out earlier in this regard.

In reply to @sharonrenee352

Oh - on the ‘own voice’ issue - with the first test run my voice was horrible (tinny and sounding far away) and after telling my Audi she made 2 or 3 small adjustments and it became fine - almost as it sounded to me before the ’s and I think I’m already fully used to what it sounds like now. I’m positive your Audi can do the same favour for you.

In reply to @sharonrenee352

Did your audiologist program an automatic incremental adjustment period for the aids to slowly ramp up to full target gains over several weeks to a couple of months? This is often done to help mitigate some of the frustration new users feel hearing all those new noises again. Even with that automatic ramping up there is still an adjustment period. Some people gradually increase the number of hours per day that they wear their aids also. The more you are able to wear them the quicker you will get used to them but everyone is different and takes a different amount of time.

Not sure of the technicalities, but she did make quite a few adjustments and I’ll be seeing them again regularly to get the fine-tuning done. The impact has been immediate and, maybe I’m lucky, the adjustment so far has been easy. I did make the decision right off to wear the ’s all day to speed up any adjustment period.

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