New ear buddies bring back the world of normal sound
When I got my first hearing aids, I had been in denial for five years, but it had gotten to the point of hearing people say the most ridiculous things.
I knew they couldn’t be saying renegade pikers or paraffin nocturnes. My ears were telling my brain what I heard, not what people were actually saying — ready-made pie crust and pair of binoculars.
My brain had lost its resilience in unscrambling misheard things quickly enough to help me respond normally. A professional told me that the longer I delayed helping my ears correct my brain, the more locked-in my brain would become. I worried that I could become demented, but my work was the main motivation for being tested.
The results of the 2006 test were scary. I could hear low sounds in a normal range, but the graph that showed my failure to hear higher sounds looked like a ski run. When people said “fifth” or “sixth” for instance, I had to make them specify the number because the two words sounded identical. I had trouble following many women’s voices, especially when they swung upward at the end of a sentence.
Getting fitted for what they call “devices” and having them placed in my ears rocked my world. The crinkling sound of the bag the audiologist handed me freaked me out. That’s what it was supposed to sound like, she said. I would soon normalize sounds that seemed exaggerated at first.
I don’t know when the devices began to date themselves or when my hearing loss went further south, but because those hearing aids had cost $4,800, I took such great care of them that
they lasted. And lasted.
In the past few years, they still were functioning pretty well. Music was still much sharper than without them. All sounds were brighter. But I was struggling again to hear on the phone at work, missing details in discussions at staff meetings and public hearings.
They’re called hearings for a reason, and I was there representing the public’s interest.
I eventually asked to move from my news beat to features, mainly to avoid jeopardizing our coverage by missing details that make news accurate. In features, I could depend less on the phone and meetings. I could take the time to go to where I could observe people doing things that were as interesting as what they said. And I could ask them to repeat themselves and look directly at their mouths.
It took awhile to realize that my lifestyle was changing. I avoided lectures, discussions and readings, any setting with lots of people. I despaired that I was missing the gist of conversations with friends in bars and restaurants. Nobody wants to socialize with someone who keeps saying, “What did you say?”
It was harder to hear most women, and it was women I most wanted to hear.
A recent test showed a decline in my hearing in the same ski-slope pattern. Last week, my new devices arrived.
Technology has advanced several generations since my crinkly bag days. Unfortunately, the cost isn’t on a downhill course. The average cost is $2,300 per ear. You can buy them online and at places like Costco for much less, but I put my faith in an audiologist.
Improved technology may lower costs of some items that have mass appeal, but that rule doesn’t apply to things that a captive audience, mostly older people, really needs.
I have been puzzled that insurance doesn’t cover hearing aids for many people, notably people in communications work. I became covered for the first time this year, and only in part.
Paying high costs for necessities is a struggle, but, thank goodness, hearing no longer is. My new ear buddies are smaller, and I don’t need to buy batteries. They charge overnight.
I can use a phone app for volume and other settings. My phone and ear buddies are synced so I can hear the caller directly in my ears, even if I’m not holding the phone.
When I left the medical center, I was elated to hear the piping song of a cardinal at proper volume. The bouncing metal tabs on my purse sounded like a tap dancer. I even heard the slap of a flag in the breeze.
Back in the newsroom ... whoa! The roar! Like several trains approaching. People were yelling as if in a train station. My keyboard clattered like exaggeratedly chattering teeth.
As I suspected, the levels on my phone app were on the highest setting. I lowered the volume and the trains and the station were gone. My keyboard still clattered, but to my delight. It was a sound I had been missing so much that last year, I returned to using my old Underwood manual typewriter at home.
The last time I had used that typewriter, disability was the furthest thing from my mind.