Do I need hearing aids?

I just had my first hearing test at Costco. I am undecided on weather I really need them, i walked around the store for 20 minutes with a pair of ReSound Cala’s. I picked up more background noise like compressors, shopping carts, voices seamed a little louder. Looking at the audograft, sounds drop of at the higher range 3k to 8k, how important is that, what will I not hear?

250 500 1k 2k 4k 8k
20 15 20 25 60 65
35 25 25 30 55 70

This newbe would appreciate any advice
Thank you

I would think you could use them. Your audiogram shows a moderate high frequency loss. Initially you might be overwhelmed by the loudness of the environmental sounds. It takes a solid month or more to adjust to how your brain now perceives sound.

It can take 30 days or so to get acclimated to your aids. The world get louder and annoying at first. The mind adapts to the new sounds – really just sounds you haven’t heard in a long time. The long trial period will give you the opportunity to make the evaluation.

As someone who is currently evaluating hearing aids for the 1st time, I also recently had a test run at Costco with the Resound Cala 8’s for about 10 minutes. I too noticed a crazy level of background noises. Good to hear that the brain eventually adjusts to the background noise level. It was kind of creepy listening in on people’s conversations while pretending that I interested in the one-gallon size cashews, but such is life.

One other thing I noticed was that my own voice sounded like I had a lisp. I did not notice this with voices of other people. The lisp diminished a bit if I decreased the volume, but that made it more difficult to hear other people’s voices. I’ve read posts that have said that this can be decreased through adjustment of the hearing aid and others have said that the brain will adjust. Some have mentioned a combination of both. Other’s have experience with what helped with the lisp sound?

Well the eavesdropping many have been for two people with hearing loss speaking too loud. :slight_smile: Actually the newer aids have a spatial feature which tries to find speech around one.

The “lisp” is from the s, th, etc. sounds and these are high frequency. The high frequency can be lowered but you may also find that your brain adjusts. If it runs beyond a couple of weeks, ask the audiologist to adjust a bit.

You should see the look on my grandchildren’s faces when they realize I heard the back talk they muttered under their breath. Priceless!!!

Thanks KenP! Very useful information for this newbie. Looking forward to my fitting appointment so that I can start the adaptation process.