"Growing old sucks…
but it beats the alternative."
These words of wisdom were said to me by my wife's grandmother when I was in my 20s. Now, 50 years later, I am beginning to understand what she meant. In my 70s, I have finally had to succumb to the need for hearing aids.
I have known all my life that I would eventually need hearing aids, but I did almost everything I could do to avoid arriving at this juncture. When it reached a point that I needed to ask my wife to repeat herself virtually every time she spoke to me, we finally realized that I needed to make a change.
I am writing these words to share with anyone who cares to read them what my journey into the world of hearing aids has been like and whether you may or may not want to join me on that road.
The psychology of understanding that you need hearing aids
Both my Otolaryngologist, commonly known as an ear, nose, and throat (ENT) specialist, and Audiologist gave me a questionnaire that included a number of questions about my psychological state of mind. I realized that since my hearing problem had been with me all of my life, I, unlike many, was not feeling depressed or isolated due to my hearing loss. I was merely trying to improve my hearing so that my wife could communicate with me from the other room. This was my first insight into the challenges surrounding hearing, communication, and hearing aids. If you are feeling isolated or depressed by the loss of being able to interact with others in the way that you would like, you very well might consider hearing aids.
How to choose a hearing aid
I asked my Audiologist, who herself is hearing impaired, what are good rules of thumb for choosing a hearing aid. Her answer was blunt and brief. First, have an ENT check out your ears and sinuses to make sure that you don't have a problem that could be cured by other means. Next, find a good Audiologist, which means someone with a doctorate in Audiology (AuD). My Audiologist explained that the only training you need to have in order to work with hearing aids is a high school diploma (this may pertain specifically to California). In other words, all those people who "claim" to be Audiologists very well, maybe, but if they don't have an AuD, they won't have the medical training to administer or understand the results of your hearing tests accurately. Finally, she told me that listening to your medical professional about what brand, make, and model of hearing aid is often the best course of action for you. My Audiologist, who was intrigued by my being an audiophile, steered me to a brand that would be most accurate and lifelike. It was also quite expensive. She told me that she had several brands that were less expensive but would not render the sound as accurately as the brand she recommended. She explained that this brand had multiple chip sets inside and that the extra chips added to the cost but also allowed her to fine-tune my hearing aids to my particular set of hearing problems.
I asked her about places like Costco for hearing aids and she replied that Costco actually has their own training for their Hearing Aid stores and that quality of personnel may vary greatly from location to location (they may or may not have an AuD). She also pointed out that the focus for Costco and other "price sensitive" shops is to provide help for people who need help with everyday hearing loss, for example, in restaurants, public spaces, or listening to TV. She pointed out that people who are audiophiles approach sound and sound accuracy differently and that my needs are more specific and complicated than those of someone who simply wants to hear better.
What I learned from my time with my hearing aids
When presented with the results of my hearing test, I was surprised to see that my hearing in both ears was reasonably flat across the audio spectrum, but that one ear had a 10-15db loss from average, and the other ear was 20-30db down from there. As I said, I have known about my hearing loss all of my life but was surprised by how flat my response was across the audio spectrum. I had expected my chart to look like a smile, higher at the ends and lower in the middle. Instead, mine was reasonably flat, but my ears, one in particular, needed more volume than most.
When I started using my hearing aids, I was stunned to hear a full soundstage. Previously, my sound stage was limited by my one ear not hearing as well as the other. By moving my head around and by, sometimes, turning 180 degrees, I was able to get a better picture of what the full stereoscopic image might sound like. With my hearing aids, I finally had an image that I could audibly hear extending from beyond the speaker on my left to beyond the speaker on the right. This was terribly exciting but oddly tiring.
My Audiologist explained to me that hearing improvement often has to do with your brain learning new patterns, meaning that you have to put in some level of effort to get the most out of your hearing aids. In my case, I was surprised to find that the section of my brain that dealt with hearing from my right ear (the bad one) was stunted from lack of activity, but once it had enough volume, it came to life. Some part of my brain was activated by access to sound coming from my right ear, and this part of my brain had never really been stimulated. This was not what I expected and was quite welcome but, as I said, tiring. Because some part of my brain has come back to life, I actually hear better without my hearing aids than I did before, but clearly, I don't hear as well without them as I do when I wear them. I did not expect to have an improvement in my un-aided hearing simply because my brain was now getting stimulation that it never gotten before.
I am not qualified to tell you whether you need hearing aids or not, but I can say that my particular problem (loss of hearing in one ear and severe loss of hearing in the other), while not uncommon, is not the normal problem people want to solve with hearing aids. The point that I am making is that the reason you want to see an AuD is that they have the skills and knowledge to discover why you have hearing loss and what the best approach to improving it would be. In some cases, it might be a relatively inexpensive set just to improve your quality of life. But if you are an avid music listener and you have invested in your sound system, I would treat hearing aids as just another element of your stereo. I also must say that I resisted hearing aids for years because I was afraid that they would negatively affect how I hear music. I was willing to sacrifice hearing in the normal world so as not to compromise how I heard music. I am happy to relate that this is simply not the case. My ability to hear both stereoscopically and with better accuracy across the sound spectrum is greatly improved and has been a real delight.
If you are interested in this topic, join our new Forum thread, '
Let's Talk Hearing Aids,'
where members can ask questions and share their experiences with hearing and hearing aids.