Do You Hear What I Hear?

Do you hear what I hear?

I've been wearing these hearing aids for nearly seven years - or so my audiologist tells me - and I've decided that it's time to get a new pair.

When I was a young boy living in northern Wisconsin,  I would walk into the windbreak that sheltered our house, lay down on my back in the snow under the pine boughs, and just listen  to the trees as they whispered to the wind; eavesdrop on the secrets they shared.  This is one of the memories that I treasure from my childhood partly because it will forever be just a memory. I can no longer hear these secrets. I no longer hear whispers of any kind. I am becoming deaf.

In my late 40s I could tell that my hearing was going. I was beginning to notice some pretty loud tinnitus (ringing in my ears) even when I hadn't just been to a rock concert. I also noticed that I was saying "What?" more often.

I visited the doctors and they told me that, yes, I was losing my hearing and no, there wasn't anything they could do to fix it. It was a genetic problem and would progressively get worse as I got older. And that soon I should consider getting hearing aids. Yes, that's right, not just one hearing aid but TWO hearing aids.  This was not welcome news. How could this be? Was I turning into my dad? He wore a hearing aid for as long as I can remember. He tried many styles and shapes and sizes over the years and none of them seemed to do much good. He graduated from the behind-the-ear style to the in-the-pocket-with-the-long-wire-that-always-got-hooked-on-things style. It seems like he was constantly adjusting the volume or pushing on the earpiece to get it to stop whistling. And cleaning earwax out of the earpiece. Ugh. No, I wasn't much interested in having one - or two - of those.

But it did make sense, I guess. My father often talked about his father's deafness. He said; "My father  never heard my voice when I was growing up. We had to write things on a little chalk board that he kept near - if we wanted to say anything to him." He was stone deaf. We always thought it was from artillery in the Civil War (he was a Major). And my father was in the middle of some fierce battles in World War I. I guess we always thought this had something to do with our 'genetic' problem. And I am the youngest of seven and none of my brothers or sisters had trouble hearing. At least they didn't when I was in my 40s.

But as I grew up I listened to rock and roll - loud rock and roll. And I went to concerts where they played loud rock and roll. And I was in a band that played loud rock and roll. None of my siblings did this. Maybe the genetic thing was mitigated by loud noise. That seemed to make sense. Music has been an important part of my life. My earliest memories have me sitting in front of a Hi Fi record player listening to the albums that my parents and older siblings had collected. After we were married one of the first things we bought was a stereo. I remember the first time I heard "Stairway to Heaven" on our new Marantz tuner with a pair of Large Advent speakers. It was a spiritual experience.  And when my son first let me listen to his Sony Diskman it literally brought tears to my eyes. I remember it well: I had just dropped him off at a high school forensics meet on the UW campus and he wanted me to take his CD Player so that nobody would steal it.  I was walking down Bascom Hill on my way to the car. The album was one of his Pink Floyd CD's. It was amazingly beautiful. I was actually sobbing - music does that to me.

So it was time for me to get a new pair of hearing aids. "The technology has improved dramatically!"; according to the salesman at Costco. My wife doesn't think my audiologist is very good and she thinks my current hearing aids are crap - she always has. So I'm looking around - shopping around - before I make a decision that will cost me thousands of dollars. Yes, we're talking between $2K and $5K per ear. These little puppies aren't cheap.  And for that price you'd think they'd be better at what they do. But they don't and after sitting through a fairly high "no pressure" sales pitch I couldn't see any reason to abandon my audiologist. To be honest, I couldn't tell any 'dramatic' improvement over my old hearing aids. Costco's price was about $1K less than the clinic's. But my insurance covers the first $1K per ear so it was a wash. And I've gotten 7 years of trouble free service from my current Oticon hearing aids so I think it's worth staying with them. My audiologist agreed that improvements have been made in the technology but her customers have reported a range of improvement from very little to modest to good. Not 'dramatic' by any means. But almost all have considered it well worth the upgrade.

I've had my new hearing aids for a couple months now. Are they better than the old ones? Yes. Do they make music sound as good at it used to sound. NO. But thank goodness for ear buds and iPods!! I don't listen to our Marantz and Large Advent speakers much any more. They sound like I'm listening over an old telephone with these new hearing aids (same as the old ones). The hearing aid's job is to make me understand speech. To do this they amplify the high part of the spectrum so I can tell the difference between the 's' and 'th' sounds. This makes music sound tinny. The ear buds 'main-line' the sound past the hearing aids and drive the full spectrum into my ear. I still miss the very high - unless I play it too(?) loud - but it's a far better balance than the hearing aids. (Oh, and the Apple ear buds do the best job.)

I haven't given up hope. These new hearing aids have a button that allows them to switch between different 'programs' OR change the amplification. I currently have them set to change volume. My next visit to my audiologist I will ask to add one program for music and one for conversation. That is one of the improvements in technology. These things are like tiny computers and this button is new. And they talk to each other. Press the button on the right aid and the volume goes up in both. Press the left ear and the volume goes down in both. They also do a far better job if canceling noise and 'fixing' the whistling.

Yes, I think they're worth the upgrade.