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What would you do in a storm with rechargeable hearing aids?!

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In reply to @DaveL

Yes, they are TRULY AMAZING!! For me, they provided sun protection where I lived over a mile high, plus warmth without feedback. I had them in a couple colors, and altho I now live in the TROPICS … my Tillys have come with me cuz who knows? A trip to Canada may be in the stars, LOL!

In reply to @Betty1

I can only add that MY rechargeable Phonak Lumity Life aids also gave me just 11 hours a day of use … UNTIL I read right here about the importance of the cell phone OS (operating system). My Android phone had OS 12 on it, and just by downloading and installing OS 13, I now get 17.5 hours of daily use.

Edited

In reply to @AtlantaNative

@AtlantaNative

VOLUME CONTROL

HEARING IN A DEAFENING WORLD

David Owen

He talks about price of premium hearing aids

IIRC it’s $1700

Cost to make it was less than $100

And Sharkey founder became a billionaire Suggests a huge profit margin

My apologies. I made few notes in the book. Observation—it’s not in the index

Edit: Foundit!

Hardcover book.

Page 193

“….It costs the manufacturer less than a hundred dollars to make them”

Quoting the author, David Owen who quotes DianneVan Tassell

Fire season has started early here in Australia. I can understand a person in the bush/outback wanting to be able to change batteries when they run low rather than risk missing a crucial evacuation order / bushfire warning. Maybe catastrophes are low probability for most of us but living remotely can be hazardous.

@Psocoptera said:

I can understand a person in the bush/outback wanting to be able to change HA batteries when they run low rather than risk missing a crucial evacuation order / bushfire warning.

So so so true. :+1::+1::+1:

In reply to @AtlantaNative

Yes, the dirty secret. are vastly overpriced by at least a factor of 300, by my guessing. So now you just get a replacement aid when the rechargeable batteries fail?? And they charge you another 250 for the pleasure? Watta racket. I’ll stick with my old rechargeable with standard sized HA batteries until it or me drops dead.

I have 2 sets of old Phonaks with interchangeable batteries.

They are precious. My last audiologist that quit set up the older set for me. So I have those at spares.

My new practitioner has promised me to set them up again when he finally does a full hearing test. That’s generous of him. Sincerely. Workman’s Comp won’t pay for that, even if it could be life saving.

In reply to @user150

Should be easy to get a new set of hearing aids. Nope. It was more stressful than getting the first one!

Should be plug and play.

DaveL

I assume that with, to date, 147 replies, no one has supplied a satisfactory answer to the question, “What would you do in a storm with rechargeable hearing aids?!” Therefore I step in to offer a definitive answer:

I would read a book.

In reply to @DaveL

@DaveL said:

I have 2 sets of old Phonaks with interchangeable batteries.

You’re lucky to have them. When people defend rechargeables by saying “you can always go back to your disposable battery spares” they ignore the new cohort of users who don’t have spares with disposable batteries.

Also, they ignore the fact that spare aids are older and probably don’t help as much.

Also, defending a new technology by saying you can always fall back to the old technology isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement.

In reply to @brec

My hat is off to Zebras

She’s the winner for asking. She made me think. Like I used to when I was a pro photographer in film days.

Before I started out I would ask, “What could shut me down?” Batteries. Film. Camera. Spare Camera. Strobe. Charged…and on and on. Zebras question is so helpful. It made me think that way.

I had my own experience where I was admitted overnight for a heart procedure.
I have sleep apnea. NO, can’t use cpap. My monitor flat lined and two came running. Point is stuff happens.
I wished I had replaceable batteries in my ’s. Future? I bet we won’t have a choice.

In reply to @1Bluejay

Thank you @1Bluejay… I think we , are all survivors, we adapt as best we can…As for anxiety, I am learning to live with it, although I have (beta blockers apart) no real control over it, my brain randomly releases a chemical into my bloodstream, for no apparent reason, I am not anxious about anything… My heart starts to race (when say) I am sitting rested, I regularly monitor my heart rate, fight or flight mode sometimes kicks in, at one time, I would get the full blown symptoms of a heart attack, with palpitations, 3,4 or 5 times a day, trying to convince yourself it’s not a heart attack is difficult, as panic attacks have just kicked in… Anxiety has hee haw to do with feeling anxious, and perhaps more to do with that chemical imbalance, creating a false cardiac alert… I guess it is the sheer intensity of an anxiety attack that throws you, especially in the early days? Nowadays, I just accept it as part of who I am, being philosophical, and relaxed, perhaps removes the intensity of whole thing… Medication, namely beta blockers, as you know, slow down your heart rate down, they block the chemical imbalance, but they have side affects, chronic fatigue is mine, but you learn to live with that…Anyway, who said life was easy :rofl: Cheers Kev :wink:

Edited

Thank you again @1Bluejay :grin: It wasn’t always so TBVH…In many ways, hearing loss was probably the catalyst, in turning my life around… In my early 30’s, Bilateral (Sudden Sensory Neural Hearing Loss) reeked havoc with my life, recruitment compounded this, and MD (Meniers Disease) was absolutely devastating,Tinnitus was just thrown in, just to make sure, I got the message :upside_down_face: Fate, tends to kick you in the teeth, especially when you are down… And what a contrast, I went from the life & soul of the party, to a virtual recluse, almost overnight, depression kicks in, you know you are in a hole, unfortunately, you don’t know how to climb out…We didn’t even have a Audiology Department on the Shetland Isles, no private dispensary’s, the nearest one was 14 hours, overnight by boat/ferry to Aberdeen, I had no one to confide in, and worse still, my friends, where ripping the piss out of me (Severe, Karma, Catchup) in another life, I was a complete wind up merchant, it was now pay back time, because, I was deaf, I was the butt end of everyones jokes, you laugh it off, you then withdraw slightly further, it wasn’t their fault, and it was impossible for me to tell them, how bad, I was feeling on the inside, they didn’t understand, nor should they, most folks, have little or no concept of what severe/profound hearing loss entails, and the truth was, neither did I, but I was about to find out…Big Style! Once you bottom out, the only way is up, hearing loss changed everything, including how I approached life, hopefully it made me a more rounded individual, with perhaps the gift of understanding other folks plight… I should imagine, if viral flu hadn’t struck, then I would have been dead a long time ago, to put it mildly, I tended to burn the candle at both ends, the weekend started on a Thursday, and finished on a Wednesday, my hangovers where legendary, but I always made work! Nowadays, we have the information highway, trying to pick the truth from, the fiction on the internet, is becoming more challenging, year on year, but there is good & bad info out there, probably in equal measure… And this site is a Godsend for , it would have made my life, so much easier back then, sometimes ignorance is not bliss…My apologies again, for waffling on, I guess the point of this post is, encouragement to soldier on, when faced with adversity, we humans are pretty special, we adapt to what life throws in our direction, the good, the bad, and the indifferent… I reiterate… We HOH, are all survivors, you adapted, be proud of what you have achieved… Cheers Kev :grin:

Thank you again Dave :grin: your words are too kind… Much respect to you Sir :grin: Cheers Kev :wink:

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