Hello all, my name is John and I’m 62. I’ve been lurking on this forum for a while knowing that my hearing has deteriorated to the point that I cannot effectively do my job anymore. My wife and co-workers have just gotten use to talking loud around me and putting up with my “say again”. The phone is workable at full volume but in-person meetings were becoming impossible.
Well… today is my first day with HA’s. Wow, what a difference! The audiologist set 3 modes to start with; directional speech, noisy environment and distant speech for meeting rooms. Things sounded OK at the audiologist but when I drove away I noticed some wind noise so I changed to noisy environment… perfect no wind noise. Then I got home, I switched to directional speech mode before I got out of the car. I opened the car door and heard birds singing in the trees. My wife doesn’t get it, but I started to tear up… I haven’t heard a bird sing in decades. I figure that it will take some time to get use to all these new sounds but right now I just thank God for this miracle of technology.
The HA’s I got are Siemens Pure micon 7mi RIC. I didn’t know how I was going to deal with the cellphone and computer VIOP that I use for work. I’ve been using a Plantronics BT behind-the-ear. I had a conference call today and tried wearing the BT. It looked dorky but worked surprisingly well just wearing it over the left HA. I left the BT volume turned up as it normally is and the sound came into the HA microphone just fine.
Do any of you have suggestions for BT? Is the miniTec a good solution or are there other things to try? Also, what suggestions do you have for trying out different modes. The Siemens has 6 positions so I can try different settings. The audiologist has a good reputation for working with their customer and she told me it doesn’t matter how many times I come in, just as long as I’m happy with the settings.
I’ll have to post my numbers later. I forgot to ask the audiologist for the actual hearing loss numbers. All I have are the charts and they’re not easy to read an accurate number. I’m thankful for this forum and to those contribute. I’ve learned a great deal following some of the threads. God bless.
John
I just got my siemens insios a week ago and they came with the minitek. I expected bluetooth experience similar to what I’ve had with bluetooth devices before (plantroics, blueant). I’ve found that the minitek is way better! More like surround sound. In phone mode most of the conversations are very good. I hear great regardless. One friend said it sounded like I was sitting right next to him. I have found the listening party hears more static when I am in an environment with a lot of electronics equipment, but they can still hear me ok. Streaming my music through my aids is awesome! I havn’t tried connecting it to my TV yet. I can now hear it with the tv volume set on 6 or 7 whereas I use to have it set on like 30+ to be able to understand everything. Glad that you have a good audiologist. Mine is like that too. Friday will be my 3rd tweaking session and neither of us expect it to be the last. Continued good luck to you! Hearing is so incredible!!!