Returning to Phonak with the Infinio Sphere - the good the bad and the ugly

@JordanK said:

I have been wearing the Sphere’s longer than just about anyone on this forum and I can honestly say that they are the most rock solid hearing aids that I have ever owned. Zero glitches. Zero repairs. In fact, I leave them on automatic 99% of the time and almost never switch programs manually or fiddle with the settings in the app.

When I read about people with issues my first thought is that they were poorly setup or the user was given the wrong receivers or wrong domes/molds. Second thought is…if they were poorly setup, I’m not sure that messing around with self programming after a poor setup is doing yourself a really big favour.

Go find a better audiologist who really understands the platform and start again.

Pro tip: Don’t start your selection based on which audiologist is selling the hearing aids for the cheapest price.

Jordan

@JordanK Jordan your advice is incredible. I believe all my problems with my Phonak Paradise P90. Were setup issues caused by the gentleman who provided them.

My setup by the hearing aid practitioner I found is much better. Lots has happened. I’ve been off work since last August.

DaveL

Mississauga

@kevels55

Hi Kev. I hope to have NL3 installed. I hope it helps.

I’m still off work.

DaveL

I had the same issue with the Infinio Sphere with AutoSense switching randomly and constantly.

It took a lot of tweaks on Target for this to stop. Tweaking programme by programme and different sounds at a time. I use NAL-NL2 though.

I have returned the HAs - not because of the HAs but because I was unhappy with the service. At the point when I returned it, I was using my Roger mic less and less. And since having returned back to my old HAs (a month now), my brain has had trouble adjusting back to them!

I am hoping for the Naida to be launched soon.

@DaveL said:

Hi Kev. I hope to have NL3 installed. I hope it helps.

I’m still off work.

Hi Dave, I think you might have to consider retiring, you ain’t no spring chicken any more? Difficult as that decision may be, there comes a point when this is inevitable…Personally, I retired over 3 years ago, and for me that was the correct decision as it was getting to a point where I came to the conclusion, what bits of my body were actually functioning correctly, as opposed to what were not… Working on average 84 hours a week (working 2 jobs) in my late 50’s, took its toll on my mental health, I saw the signs, but I ignored them, then I got Sepsis, severe stress ensued, closely followed by severe anxiety, and most probably PTSD? 4 years later in 2021, Sepsis happened again, and mentally that floored me, it eventually became clear that functioning in a high stress job wasn’t going to work! I believe, I overdid things, for approximately 2 years by working 7 days a week, and no holidays, both jobs were hard work and stressful for different reasons, I believe Sepsis just tipped me over the edge, but overworking was perhaps the initial root cause? Give yourself a break Dave, and please consider retiring… Cheers Kev

@kevels55

That’s my plan. Been building schools. And renovated about 150 of them. Started 22 years ago. Haven’t had a summer vacation in all that time. That’s busy time. We have 260 schools. 150,000 kids. I had 55 days vacation that I couldn’t take. My broken wrist was a sign.

Your advice means a lot.

DaveL

@kevels55

@kevels55 Agreed!! Thank you for your experience and recommendation to Dave.

Sepsis twice??!! Wow, you are supremely lucky to have made it through sepsis twice!! That can take you out in a big, fat hurry!

Dave, I’m glad that you are agreeing with Kev, hard though it may be.

Thank you @Blue_Pearl1… Yeah, Sepsis is an extremely dangerous illness, but it doesn’t end there, it has around a 30% mortality rate, but approximately half will go onto developing what is called “Post Sepsis Syndrome”, Sepsis by its nature, attacks all your vital organs, including your brain, with billions of bacteria flooding your bloodstream (Previously known as, Blood Poisoning) this can create long term damage, especially so with the brain…I had no idea whatsoever what Anxiety was, until after my first bout of Sepsis, it is very random, attacks will happen 2, 3, 4 or even 5 times a day, for no apparent reason I would go into “Fight or Flight mode”, my brain would release a chemical into my bloodstream, and I would get all the full blown symptoms of a heart attack, no amount of telling yourself it wasn’t a heart attack could convince you otherwise, a terrible affliction, probably far worse than any illness I have ever experienced, including the actual Sepsis! On a positive note, Beta Blockers will dial this down, but you are on these for life, but if you forget to take a tablet or 2, my heart starts racing, sometimes as high as around 150bpm, so I constantly monitor my heart rate, it’s a balancing act, too much Propranolol will send me as low as 40bpm, so you have to be extremely careful! But, like all things in life, we humans are very resourceful, we learn to adapt, but I can easily say, without fear or favour, Anxiety is the worst illness, that I have ever experienced, and probably by some distance? I count myself as very fortunate, to be a double Sepsis survivor is somewhat remarkable, but Sepsis for many survivors isn’t over, in many ways, it’s the beginning of the new you, some will lose, arms and legs, sometimes both, I heard of one lady whom had her nose removed! Some like me, will have an unseen legacy, but that doesn’t make it any less real… But, I survived to tell the tale. Cheers Kev

@Dr_Palmer said:

I will never recommend something I don’t fully understand.

From reading this forum I have come to realize that the Sphere’s are loved by those with more sever hearing loss while those with mild or moderate hearing loss are less likely to love the Sphere’s. Your loss falls into the mild or moderate.

Programing the Sphere’s is another weak point by some audiologist and fitters. Seems those that tinker a lot with the Sphere’s programming are less happy with Auto sense for example. Have you noticed what I am talking about?

I sometimes feel that my Sphere i90 switch to quickly to speech in noise, or Spherical speech in noise. I believe that is because I had been so use to the Intent1 aids. I also have found that I can carry on a conversation in my Jeep Grand Cherokee very easily with my Spheres in the Autosense program. I love the nice weather with the windows open while driving and riding my bike. I also love being in the forest and hearing the wind in the treetops.
I believe it is that I grew up before AC in vehicles was readily available. I also lived in the country and love nature. I dearly had being in noisy cities. I am hoping my wife and I get feeling better so we can do some traveling soon. But my wife is on a jury panel until May and I expect to get called for the summer. Which will be a waste of time, due to my career I get bypassed. It seem lawyers don’t like individuals that made their careers by troubleshooting and fixing complicated things. And I have scared off defense attorneys by admitting I can read lips. But my biggest concern with jury duty is my hearing loss. What if I miss interpret something reality important.

@cvkemp said:

But my biggest concern with jury duty is my hearing loss.

Ever hear of contacting the court (in writing) stating “you can’t serve on jury duty” due to your severe hearing loss? Do that and you will never be asked again to service on a jury again. Case Closed.

@Raudrive said:

From reading this forum I have come to realize that the Sphere’s are loved by those with more sever hearing loss while those with mild or moderate hearing loss are less likely to love the Sphere’s. Your loss falls into the mild or moderate.

A better way of summarizing this statement is to say that the Sphere program works much better with closed fittings or molds. Open domes/fittings seem to allow too much background noise to slip in and this tends to negate some of the Sphere program effectiveness.

My audiologist says the best candidates for the Sphere program also have very flat hearing losses which is why they work for me.

Jordan

To Roberto’s statement: “I wonder if maybe hearing aid manufacturers should just have two programs. One for normal environments which people are in most of the time and another one that you can manually change to for noisy environments like restaurants etc.”

This is almost how my Oticon aids are set up. I’m in the main program almost all the time. It works very well in most situations, including noisy restaurants. Program #2 is for pickleball, which I play regularly in a large gym-type room. This program attenuates sharp sudden sounds and the echoing of the room, but still helps me hear the speech of other players. I also use this program if the volume level in a party is just too loud, or sometimes around my small grandkids, who can overwhelm the aids with their sudden high pitches! Program #3 is for music. In this program much of the speech processing features such as compression are eliminated so that I can hear the music as naturally as possible, with just the volume increased. I also use the graphic equalizer in this program (only three bands, but helpful because without it high frequencies are overpronounced).

This is my third set of hearing aids, after about five years with each of the first two sets. I’m a musician, and the current audiologist was recommended to me by other musicians. She was very thorough, continually adjusting the programs over 3-4 meetings over several weeks. I’m extremely happy with the results.

The most challenging sound environment for me is riding in the car at relatively higher speeds on relatively rough highways. Either the road noise is overwhelming if using Program #1, or everything is muffled including the speech of others in the car if using Program #2. I don’t remember this situation being this bad with my previous hearing aids, but I think that could be because I kept them turned down ALL the time because the general sound quality was harsh.

My hearing loss isn’t flat and the Spherical program works great for me.

We are all individuals with different hearing needs. There are a infinite possibilities.