Spent the last year grieving, fighting reality, kicking and screaming, and then finally digging in to learn how to program my own Phonak L90 and Widex 440 hearing aids. still a lot to learn, but I’m getting there, and starting back at work, mixing, composing, and gigging. No one but me has noticed a difference.
My experience with hearing care professionals tells me that someone like me is missing or rare in the HCP world - someone with respectable music credits, that can potentially teach others how to use these tools, how to speak the music language and translate that to hearing aid speak, how to tweak settings IN the field (in the studio or rehearsal room), and how to understand and have empathy for what hearing loss is like, in general and for musicians and music composers and mixers. AND, how to stay in the game, if possible.
I’m thinking of becoming a hearing instrument specialist, and selling hearing aids at a competative price, and steering people to resources that will help empower them to make their own hearing choices.
Would you agree this is a needed business model?
I had very little compassion from the three or 4 audiologists and HCPs I saw, and they knew very little about the emotional and practical predicament I was in.
what do you think?