I'm new here, I need your help and advice for my cookie bite

Hearing Loss
#1

Hi, I’m new to the world of deafness, after watching some videos and reading over internet, I’ve found that I have cookie bite hearing loss, I thought I had noise exposure but after checking my audiogram with other audiograms from interned, it changed my mind.

I know that I must do an appointment with an audiologist, but unfortunately in my country there’s no such of thing, so we only have ENT and Audio technicians so I would like to know your advice and opinions about my hearing loss, since this is the first time that I got aware of my deafness, I got a pair of signias over ebay, I know the risks but I’m also a computer programmer and I have pretty good knowledge in audio so I wanted to fit it by myself, I know that I also need REM but at least the in situ should be a good start until I find someone that rents or charges me for a REM measurement.

#2

Hi, your audiogram looks a bit unusual to me, with that return to almost-normal hearing at very high freqs. However, you will indeed need HAs because of your moderate loss at freqs relevant to speech. Self-fitting is an excellent option. Hopefully someone here (or posts elsewhere) can guide you to the proper soft- and hardware.

#3

There is a DIY area in the forum that can help you.
To find it go to categories. Then scroll down to muted categories. There you will find the DIY forum.
Lots of good help there.
Good luck

3 Likes
#4

Your hearing loss is very similar to what my hearing loss was 20 years ago. Cookie bite hearing loss is a hard issue for most of us trying to understand conversations because out loss is right in the speech frequency range.
My advice is to really do your best to explain what you are experiencing with your audiologist. I am not going to speak to the DIY concept because I haven’t had that experience. I am a veteran, a retired IT professional, and a perfectionist, I don’t make a great DIY person because I would be continually making adjustments before I had to to really know if the changes I made was helping over the long run. I have been extremely fortunate to have understanding audiologists that have spent countless hours making adjustments, and listening to me. Also, as a veteran I get my aids from the VA system, I have a 50% disability rating. I believe my audiologist would have understood if I had done some of my own adjustments, for which I basically have in the past by my recommendation for changes using the software. But I only made the recommendations and then allowed my audiologist to make the final decision, I am guessing it has been a 50/50 ratio of whether he agreed with my recommendations or not. But he has preached to me what I now preach to others. “Patience”, something I have never been good at, until I have had to deal with my hearing loss and health.
If you can be patient and not jump at make continuous changes, and allow yourself time to adjust to changes to the aids, by allowing at least a month before make more changes then DIY if you like. I don’t recommend it.

3 Likes
#5

Yes, I think is a mix between cookie bite and noise induction hearing loss.

About the software and hardware needed, I already got them, so maybe someone with experience could give me some specific tune up tips.

#6

Thanks, the problem is that in my country there’s no audiologist, just audio fit technicians, so as I mentioned before, I already have audio knowledge, I know how to do recordings for music, I know about equalizers, I have a good knowledge about home theater audio, actually I’ve been equalizing my home theater and my computer with my hearing loss, so tuning up my hearing aids wouldn’t be an issue to me but since is my first time doing it, I would like to learn from somebody with a similar to my hearing loss so anything you can tell me about how to tune up my hearing aid will be appreciated.

#7

Yeah, I already got the information (software and hardware) needed for doing it by myself.

Now I’m looking to get some tips from people that have a similar hearing loss that I have.

#8

I am an communications electronics technician and IT Professional, I too understood how the circuits work, and all about audio frequencies, I have even designed audio systems, but I don’t understand human Hearing well enough to attempt to make my own adjustments, hy I have so little hearing left that I am not willing to take a chance of destroying what I have left. I am on the edge where hearing aids are useful and needing a CI or even 2 CIs.

1 Like
#9

I understand your point, the problem that I see in my case is that there’s no audiologist here, so in my case an audio technician is my best bet.

So thanks for the advice, If I can get a good ENT that knows about my hearing problem, then I’ll take his advice, meanwhile I’ll take your advice about reading and learning more about human hearing.

Meanwhile, if you can you tell me some tips or something that your audiologist did to your audio that you think improved your hearing, I will appreciate that.

1 Like
#10

Maybe this thread needs to be moved to the DIY area.
That’s where you ask these type questions.
Good luck

2 Likes
#11

The reason why I posted it here is because I wanna know as much as possible from the deafness by itself, so as much information I could gather as the sickness by itself would be appreciated.