hask you make me laugh, lol. actually i am feeling a bit sheepish, but am still glad i asked, regardless of how daft this surely must make me appear, how unfathomable it must be for you and others to see my audi report and wonder how it can be…that i am just so stunned to find out how bad my hearing really is.
it’s a real eye opener for me too, an education in itself just comparing my chart to others here. what can i say i guess i have a ‘gift’ (?) for normalizing the abnormal. there are far worse things, imo, than my hearing condition, which i regard and experience in my life as an inconvenience more than impairment. my attitude towards this issue is rather casual i guess, i’ve always had bigger fish to fry and haven’t really spent much time/energy lamenting or worrying about it as much as i’ve just looked for simple ways of coping and adapting so i can focus on stuff that matters more to me.
i can still hear the doorbell and the smoke detector btw, teaching my dog was more a preventative measure, an ‘in case one day’ sort of thing. i also taught her sign language, not for any predictive reason at the time, but something that has proved invaluable now, as she can’t hear my commands anymore, but still responds to hand signals. i’m actually more worried about her hearing loss than my own, don’t know how i’ll take her for walks this summer at the off leash area when she can’t hear me calling her.
ok well i can’t hear the doorbell if i’m down in the far corner of the basement, and i can’t hear the oven timer unless i’m standing next to the stove. i must admit i do feel a sense of irresponsibility to some degree in that i can’t hear police, ambulance or firetruck sirens until said vehicle is right alongside me. to that end i am somewhat hyper-vigilant when driving, and rarely have the car stereo on, never in the city.
my first hearing test was about 12 years ago, no underlying medical conditions. i’m adopted, and do not know my genetic history, my audi speculates that my condition is a combination of congenital factors and noise damage. she thinks i’ve probably been partially deaf my whole life, just never noticed. tho i was tested in school when i was 8, seems my hearing was fine then. i get tested yearly, so far my hearing is stable, tho a bit of a drop in the 500 - 1000 range on the last one. i also have tinitus 24/7, but am rarely if ever bothered by it.
as for wearing part-time…yeah i sort of guessed it would be counter-productive. but i know i wouldn’t wear aids while working, far too great a risk of ruining them. also much of the time my first priority is hearing protection on a job site, i work new construction a lot, so everything from air compressors to jack hammers going at once sometimes. even my custom ear plugs are not enough on occasion and i have to leave. i end up working a lot of evening and weekends when no-one else is around when that happens.
jay man, thank you for that link, i was looking for specs on the resound dots earlier today, i wonder why the ha practitioner would tell me they were ‘highly suitable’ i think is how she put it. i think i’ll look for someone else.
SRT is the hearing level, this how loud a sound must be for you to hear a word that will not trip you up (i.e. baseball), I believe this is also set where your comprehension is 50% for hearing the word. You could probably google how to read an audiogram and get much more information.
crumb i’m such a sucker for it then, lol.