ears!

I might be deaf, but I still take for granted that I will have two working hearing aids, which it why it is so annoying when one stops working!

The left hearing aid was being a bit wonky a couple of weeks ago and then early last week it conked out altogether! And as I really can't stand not having a pair of working ears (as far as I can get them to work that is!) I arranged an appointment with audiology to get a replacement, which was great except that it only worked for a few days!!

I discovered on Saturday morning that the replacement wasn't working, which gave my annoying little brother enormous scope to wind me up!! As I was fiddling about with my aids to see if I could get them to work he kept either whispering or talking loudly or mouthing words in the middle of sentences!! Grrrrr - but we laughed!

Anyway, the upshot of it all is that I had another appointment with audiology this morning in order to have an audiogram done, try out some new hearing aids and get some new earmolds done. I expect that many of you have never had an audiogram done, but basically this is just a test to see how much I can hear - I sit there wearing headphones and holding a buzzer and the point is that every time I hear a sound I press the buzzer so that the audiologist knows that I have heard something.

The trouble is that I end up listening so hard that I start to imagine that I have heard something or start to ignore sounds that I have heard because I think that I am imagining things - you see the trouble I have?! Anyway, the audiogram shows that there is no difference in my hearing from what it was a few years ago, so that is something.

And...I now have new hearing aids which means that I have to get used to them as they are a different make and have been programmed slightly differently to see if they work for me. The new ones have been programmed to boost the more soft sounds like the fan in the office, the coins dropping in the cashbox, or paper rustling close by - which is all very nice, but as much as I want to be able to hear as much as I can I don't know if I want every little detail as it gets annoying!!

I am going to have to take some time with these hearing aids and see if I do get used to them or whether they do even offer any benefit over my old ones as different frequencies are now at different decibel levels which means that voices are a little quieter than they used to be. I do have a follow up appointment in about a months time so I do have time to get used to them and see how I get on!