Newbie looking for some advice about hearing aids

Hearing Aids
#1

I apologize in advance for the length of this initial post. But I’d like to give a full picture so that those of you who are kind enough to read my post and respond know the full story.

I’ve recently been diagnosed with a hearing loss (mild-to-moderate?) after reporting to my PCP that my long time tinnitus had changed in both character and duration in the past year. He referred me to an audiologist who did a full hearing screening and who recommended that I be seen by a different audiologist in the same group for a full tinnitus evaluation. The results of the first hearing screening are in my signature.

I saw the second audiologist on Friday and I should get the written results sometime this week. The second audiologist believes that the tinnitus is caused by the more severe hearing loss that I have in the higher frequencies, and since my tinnitus is high pitched, this makes sense to me. She took a nice long time to talk to me after the screening was over and among other things we talked about what things I found particularly frustrating with my hearing as well as my career and my somewhat active lifestyle. She also told me that while I am coping quite well right now with the hearing loss, I should consider hearing aids since an appropriate pair of hearing aids might reduce some of the daily frustrations I have been having and attributing to the tinnitus. The audiologist (whom I do trust) said that it’s up to me to decide whether to try hearing aids or not. She said that it’s reasonable for me to wait if I want, but that I need to realize that the problems I’ve been attributing to the tinnitus in the past year are actually caused by the hearing loss. She also took a nice long time to talk to me after the screening to go over the results and we also talked about what things I found particularly frustrating with my hearing as well as my career, my somewhat active lifestyle, and my mother-in-law’s long history of being frustrated with her own Miracle Ear hearing aids. (MIL has “worn” hearing aids for at least 10 years; she’s on her second pair of aids and has never been particularly happy with them.) I asked the audiologist what sort of hearing aids she would recommend if/when I decide to get some. Given what I said about my lifestyle, job, and my specific concerns about hearing aids, the audiologist said that I would probably do best with top-of-the-line BTE or RITE aids or at least middle-of-the-line BTE or RITE aids because the software used to process the sound would do a better job of doing what I want the hearing aids to do.

I’d like to give you the same information about my background that I gave the audiologist.

I am an almost 58-year-old female college math professor (class sizes are usually 10-25 students). I don’t have significant problems understanding most of my students and I typically follow the conversation in faculty and committee meetings without too many problems. But I have significant problems understanding my soft-spoken husband and my very soft spoken son who both have a tendency to mumble at times. (When hubby articulates his words, I have less of an issue understanding him.) I also do have trouble understanding the most soft-spoken of my students—in a class of 20-25, there are usually 2-3 students that I have real problems understanding. I also subjectively feel that my problems with understanding my husband and those soft-spoken students are growing. I find that I often turn the TV up when I’m watching it if there is quiet dialog, but as soon as music or loud conversation or action (i.e. things that “go boom”) come on the TV show, the noise level seems painfully loud to me and there’s a race to lower the volume as fast as I can before it triggers a migraine headache. (Loud noises have been a migraine trigger for me ever since I can remember.) I don’t have problems when talking on the landline telephone except to my son; talking on cell phones is often an issue, and as a consequence, I resist carrying a cell phone with me. I’ve also become very frustrated over my inability to hear many pleasant background sounds such as birds singing, crickets chirping, leaves rustling in the wind, etc. And I’m quite frustrated over the fact that I can’t reliably hear when it starts to rain gently so that I can close the car windows and house windows before it starts to rain hard enough to get things seriously wet. When hubby asks whether there’s a toilet running or a faucet dripping, that’s another annoyance for me. But I can hear when our heater/ac unit comes on just fine, and it’s “loud enough” to interfere with my ability to watch TV, and it wasn’t that subjectively “loud” 2 years ago.

So I’m not opposed to the idea of getting hearing aids, but cost is an issue—my insurance will pay nothing for them, which is not uncommon. But I also want to make sure that if I spend several thousand dollars on a pair of hearing aids, that there’s good probability that I will actually like them enough to wear them and benefit from them.

My concerns (fears?) about hearing aids are largely based on my MIL’s not very positive experience. Here’s a list of my main concerns:

  • Over amplification of sounds I can already hear just fine. On the hearing test, I started to experience some discomfort in both ears by 80 dB. At 55-65 dB, I scored 100% on word recognition on the hearing tests. My understanding is that ordinary conversation is often around 60dB in loudness, and I don't want ordinary conversation amplified to the point where it starts to become painful. This is my primary worry since my MIL has repeatedly complained of how her hearing aids make everything too loud.
  • Inability to identify where sound is coming from. One of my MIL's complaints about her first set of aids was that when she was having dinner with multiple family members that she had a tough time figuring who was speaking to her. (It doesn't help that two of her sons are identical twins and their voices do sound exactly alike.)
  • Durability. I enjoy being outside in all kinds of weather. Hubby and I hike and camp in the summer. I garden. I like taking long walks in the rain. In the winter time we ski once a week.
  • Concern that hearing aids will do little or nothing to bring the pleasant non-speech background sounds back into my life. As I said earlier: I miss nature sounds when I'm outside. It's only been in the last couple of years where this has been an issue, and this past year in particular, I've been attributing my inability to hear a lot of these sounds to "the tinnitus is so loud that it's drowning out all the pleasant background sounds.

On the other hand, I’m also a bit worried that if I just put up with my current level of hearing loss, I’ll lose my ability to distinguish and ignore background noise to the point that when I get to where I must use hearing aids, I’ll have the same problem that my MIL has with her aids: She’s constantly complaining that the aids make all the background noise so loud that it’s difficult for her to hear and follow a conversation if she’s in a somewhat noisy environment.

So now for my questions:

  1. Are more expensive hearing aids likely to do a better job of amplifying only the sounds that I need amplified?

2. Are more expensive hearing aids more likely to allow me to hear those pleasant background sounds that started vanishing from my hearing in the last couple of years ? In other words, is it silly to hope that a properly programmed pair of top-of-the-line hearing aids will enrich my whole aural environment rather than just amplifying speech, including speech that I can already hear reasonably well?

3. Would I be more likely to be happier with a BTE or RITE style hearing aid? I’m not particularly vain and the idea of having something totally plugging up my ears does bother me—my ears sometimes get a clogged feeling when my allergies are acting up and I really dislike that feeling.

  1. How hard is it to wear glasses and BTE/RITE hearing aids at the same time? I’m severely near sighted and wear glasses almost constantly. I also change from distance glasses to reading glasses or prescription sun glasses multiple times a day. (I just could not grade or read comfortably with no-line bifocals since there was just too much head movement required to find the right part of the lens to read through.)

Finally, any tips folks want to give me? Any specific brands or models of aids people think I ought to look into?

Thanks in advance for any advice or help you can provide me!

#2

I’m new to hearing aids as well. Been wearing them for about two and a half months. This forum is a great source of information. I have found that price doesn’t necessarily mean much with hearing aids. It seems getting them programmed correctly is most important. This may take several adjustments and your brain will take time to get used to hearing with the aids.

I would honestly recommend Costco if that’s convenient for you. You’ll save about half the price and have a generous trial/return program if it doesn’t work out for you. Your hearing loss based on your audiogram seems pretty typical so I would think you should be able to benefit from hearing aids pretty well.

I would recommend RIC hearing aids vs BTE. Also wearing them with glasses is very comfortable.

#3

robysue, I am merely a fairly new user (started trialing aids last summer about this time), but since it’s Sunday night, and you are probably wishing for info, I’m going to give you what I can. More experienced users and the professionals will probably chime in when they can.

More expensive than what? If you mean really inexpensive aids that don’t do anything other than turn the volume up on the world, then yes. If you mean the difference between the latest and greatest $7,000 aids and the one step back $6,000 aids, I don’t think so. Also if you mean the difference between the private audi’s $7,000 aids and some of the Costco aids for less than half that, probably not there either. What you find is HAs are very individual. So you may try two different pairs and find A is unbearable for amplifying things you don’t want to hear and B does a good job making those things sound natural. I may try the same aids and find B works for me and A are the unbearable ones. Some of that has to do with fitting, but some has to do with the differences between me and thee.

Most new wearers find background noises too loud until they adjust. You aren’t going to get bird calls louder without also having running water and your computer keyboard louder.

Since it sounds like tinnitus is a big factor for you, you should know that the aids with tinnitus masking are the more expensive ones. For some people just getting aids helps with tinnitus. I think it is for me although I’m not willing to certify that yet, but from what I’ve seen here, even the masking programs don’t work for everyone.

Costco aids don’t have the tinnitus masking feature, but you can get the longest trial periods there. For me it was 90 days; I see posts saying it’s now 180 days. You have to pay up front, but you get a 100% refund if you return them. Private audis tend to have 2-week to 30-day trial periods and charge a restocking fee, although the one I dealt with didn’t charge my credit card up front.

All aids are going to “enrich your whole aural environment,” the trick is to find ones and that can do it in a way you’re comfortable with and find someone who can program them to take advantage of that best.

That’s something you have to answer for yourself. From posts here I get the impression BTE are only sold these days when there’s some reason. RITE (RIC) are more common/popular. Maybe someone else can give pros and cons of each style.

I don’t think most people have any problem with it. I wear sunglasses over my RIC aids whenever I’m out and about, and have computer glasses also. The RIC aid at least, is small and the arm of the glasses sit on top without any problem.

Some of your outdoor activities would call for caution, though. If you walk in the rain to where you get soaked, dripping hair and all that, you’d need to take the HA out. People who do really sweaty things get these little protector thingums that go over the aids.

As to tips, I’d say take advantage of the trial periods offered. I’ve never been very good at doing that, but I did try 3 brands and am glad I did. Of course some people try one brand and are immediately in love, but the first ones I tried were high-end very expensive ones from a private audi, and I didn’t think they helped enough to be worth the bother. You can see in my signature that my hearing is worse than yours but similar. I too got by for a long time by simply asking people to speak up, but the fact is most do that for a sentence or two and then fall back to their natural level, and it finally got to where I knew I was tuning people out and not even trying to understand them, and I needed to do something. I’m glad I continued to pursue a solution. I’m sure you can find aids that work for you.

#4

Actually, you did a very good job of covering all of the bases. No apology necessary.

So I’m not opposed to the idea of getting hearing aids, but cost is an issue—my insurance will pay nothing for them, which is not uncommon.

Costco

But I also want to make sure that if I spend several thousand dollars on a pair of hearing aids, that there’s good probability that I will actually like them enough to wear them and benefit from them.

Costco. The 180 day trial will give you enough time to decide if they are really right for you.

My concerns (fears?) about hearing aids are largely based on my MIL’s not very positive experience.

MIL was wearing Miracle Ear, I’ve never heard any good things about them. Maybe she should go to Costco as well.:rolleyes:

  1. Are more expensive hearing aids likely to do a better job of amplifying only the sounds that I need amplified?

Yes. But a less expensive, good, hearing aid may do that too. A $7000 pair of hearing aids would probably be great. But a $3000 pair may be just fine too. And at Costco they will probably be less than $2000.

  1. Are more expensive hearing aids more likely to allow me to hear those pleasant background sounds that started vanishing from my hearing in the last couple of years ? In other words, is it silly to hope that a properly programmed pair of top-of-the-line hearing aids will enrich my whole aural environment rather than just amplifying speech, including speech that I can already hear reasonably well?

Pretty much same answer as above. My Dad’s hearing aids were simply amplifiers, which made some things too loud. Today’s hearing aids are equalizers, they are programmed to the frequencies you need.

3. Would I be more likely to be happier with a BTE or RITE style hearing aid? I’m not particularly vain and the idea of having something totally plugging up my ears does bother me—my ears sometimes get a clogged feeling when my allergies are acting up and I really dislike that feeling.

Only you can answer that, but the RITE style is certainly more popular. When I had domes there was no plugged up feeling at all. My custom molds did give that feeling just a little bit, but my audi opened up the vents and that helped a lot. With your loss, if you got custom molds they would probably be vented pretty well.

  1. How hard is it to wear glasses and BTE/RITE hearing aids at the same time? I’m severely near sighted and wear glasses almost constantly. I also change from distance glasses to reading glasses or prescription sun glasses multiple times a day. (I just could not grade or read comfortably with no-line bifocals since there was just too much head movement required to find the right part of the lens to read through.)

A great many people on this forum say it’s no problem at all. I like to say it’s not much of a problem. My $8 walmart readers would fall off my nose when I looked down (which I tend to do when I’m reading:)). Someone here mentioned glasses with earpieces that go straight back and wrap around your skull rather than your ear. I picked up a pair like that at walmart, and they indeed work much better. When I’m in the market for new driving glasses I’ll look for the same feature. But it’s not enough of an issue to really bug me.

Finally, any tips folks want to give me? Any specific brands or models of aids people think I ought to look into?

The provider is far more important than the brand. With your level of loss, any hearing aid should do. You’ve already said you like and trust your audi, which is great, but you also said cost is an issue, so you may want to look at costco. Search for costco on this forum and you will find that it’s kind of hit or miss. Some costcos have great providers, and some have lousy ones. But their prices can’t be beat.

As someone else mentioned, Costco aids do not have tinnitus masking, but you might not need it. I am mostly unaware of my tinnitus when wearing my aids. Many others have reported a similar experience.

Above all remember, when you first get your aids, everything can be quite overwhelming. Stick with it, and all the loud noises seem to magically quiet down after a while. I also recommend keeping a written journal of your experiences for the first couple months. It’s very helpful to your provider.

Good luck!

#5

I was in a similar situation (and age) as you when I was first diagnosed with a mild hearing loss. I too went’t in because I believed that it was my tinitus that caused me to not hear well in some situations. For some reason I did non come a away with a strong recommendation to get hearing aids, probably because I was very focused on the tinitus being my problem and the hearing loss not being all that great. However, a year later, my loss was great enough for me to feel I needed to do something and I went back to the same ENT office, but saw a diffrent audiologist. My loss had worsened along with my tinitus and I was ready to buy HAs. My audiologist told me that getting the hearing aids alone was likely to reduce my tinitus. And that turned out yo be true. I still hear it, but it is much less (except at night w/o aids) and I do not have the feeling of it overshadowing the sounds I am supposed to hear.

I felt an immediate difference with the tints and my ability to hear, but it took me the bigger part of a year to get to a point where I felt that my HAs truly worked the way they should. This was partly a matter of getting used to amplification of everything, partly due to getting them adjusted just right to my liking. For some it is a faster process. I think for me it was also the learning curve of understanding what exactly is going on, when you start hearing the world through HAs, and what you can ask for and how to describe the problems that you have with this and that sound to the audiologis. But bottom line, if you invest yourself, have somebody who you fell you can work with and a good mix of persistence and patience, it will all be worth it. At this point (3 years in) I love my HAs and could not be without them.
Go for it and good luck!

#6

Bluecrab,
Glasses need to be properly fitted and adjusted for your head and face. Optometrists shape the ear pieces to give a correct fit so they cannot fall off when you lean forwards but don’t rub behind your ears. If you have problems get your glasses adjusted but the $8 ones may have limited scope to mold to fit. :slight_smile:

#7

If you do not go the Costco route, find out if you are eligible for TruHearing, etc. These are 3rd parties who connect with local audiologists and provide a discounted fee/service for hearing aids.

You may even want to ask your current audiologist if they are affiliated with a 3rd party. They will not tell you upfront since they can charge you more.

#8

First, I wouldn’t worry too much about the experience of your MIL. May not be relevant to you at all.

For 1 and 2, hearing aids can slightly lower what it considers to be background noise (loud restaurants, for example), to give you a better chance of hearing close voices. It will definitely enrich your life! They (the pros) can set them up to boost soft sounds more than loud sounds. They don’t increase everything the same amount.

For 3, RITE or RIC (Receiver in the Canal) is the more modern version and two quick advantages are that the body of the hearing aid can be slightly smaller, since the speaker is in your ear, and not in the body of the hearing aid, and you can swap out the receiver ($100) if you need more power (I actually did that).

For 4, I wear glasses sometimes and I don’t have any problem, but my hair is very short. The glasses I wear have progressive lenses and a little magnetic clip-on sunglass part, so I don’t take off and put on throughout the day. Most of the time, though, I use multifocal contacts, which I love, being able to see in the distance and up close at the same time. Highly recommend the multifocal contacts.

It is common to have a trial period where you pay for the hearing aids and wear them and have all the periodic adjustments and then, if they are just not right, you can return them. Costco has a 180 day return period. Other dispensers have 30-90 day trial periods. So you don’t have to make a perfect choice up front. You can switch brands or models later once you see how it goes. BUT, your brain takes some time to adjust to all the new sounds, so what sounds terrible at first will sound very pleasant once your brain adjusts. So, some people go through the trial and it doesn’t sound perfect, so they return them and try another model. Then, things start to sound better just because the brain has adjusted, so the second one gets the credit for being better when it may have just been the brain that got better.

It is also common to think other people mumble, when you have hearing loss. If everyone else says they mumble, then maybe they do mumble.

#9

Do you use a McGraw-Hill text? If so there is a service they have called Connect, for online homework and tests. You can have complicated problems with whatever amount of help you want on the homework, and they grade it. :slight_smile:

I use it for an Intermediate Accounting course I teach. I put my comments on the Blackboard Grade Center.

#10

My hearing aids are RIC (receiver in canal). I wear glasses but take them off and put them back on several times a day with no problems. I don’t even think about the hearing aids when taking my glasses on and off.

Modern hearing aids reduce the volume of sounds that approach your discomfort level. As someone above said, the aids operate as an equalizer, increasing the volume of frequencies according to your loss, and decreasing the volume of over-loud sounds and background noise. A lot of conversation is at about 50 dB, but a lot of consonant sounds are around 35 dB. You can shout an “O” nice and loud, but you can’t shout a “th” sound. So even when people speak louder you’re missing a lot of the soft high-pitched consonants, especially in your left ear.

Hearing aids emphasize the frequencies involved in speech, which range from 250 Hz to 4000 Hz. A lot of birds and insects are above that range, so it’s important to tell your hearing aid fitter those things are important to you. Widex is a brand which is reputed to amplify frequencies up to 11,000 dB. I thought I would never hear a songbird again, but I hear them loud and clear now.

Nowadays hearing aids are water repellent, but you want to try to keep them dry. As one of the others said stick them in your pocket if you’re caught in the rain, or simply carry a water-repellent cap with you. For hiking, I think a do-rag would be a good choice; easy to stuff in a pocket. Several people here say they’ve accidentally stepped in the shower with their aids in with no harm done, but I don’t push my luck.

The higher-end hearing aids have strategies to help locate sounds. Your MIL probably doesn’t have that feature in her aids. If you go to Miracle Ear or a little storefront hearing aid store they will sell you what they’ve got regardless of what you actually need. I went to an audiologist affiliated with a teaching hospital who carries all the major brands and doesn’t work on commission. She had me trial some mid-priced Widex aids and I’m very pleased with them. If I were still working I’d have shopped for higher-end aids which suppress background noise and help with location of sounds.

Costco’s aids are major brands at a much lower cost than most sellers. But they don’t have aids with tinnitus maskers. Just wearing the aids suppresses my tinnitus a lot – a brief trial with aids should tell you whether that’s sufficient or whether you’ll need aids with a tinnitus suppression feature.

I suggest you contact your state’s workers compensation agency to see if you qualify for some financial assistance from them. I wore a hearing aid when I was teaching in my 20s which I got for free through workers comp. And maybe talk to your human relations person where you work to see if there’s other help available. You need to hear to do your job.

#11

Folks, the thing that amplifies loud sounds less than soft sounds is a compressor, not an equalizer. The equalizer is the thing that amplifies different frequencies differently (which is, of course, also part of a hearing aid).

Robysue, I think that chances are well that you will profit from a hearing aid. My tinnitus got louder, too, and is now much softer again because of wearing aids (and less hearing effort as a result of wearing aids).

One thing is a bit difficult with your loss. I think in english, a loss where you hear low and very high frequencies well, the mids bad, is called cookie-bite loss. So your loss is a reverse-cookie-bite loss, meaning that you hear lows not so well, highs bad, but mids well. This is a bit uncommon.

For high-frequ loss only, you could well go with an open fit (open domes or a very open custom mold). But it might be that you get better results with a custom mold which is not too open. A very open fit cannot amplify low frequencies. So be aware that your experience might not be that fantastic right from the start.

Good luck

Musician_72

#12

Okay, I stand corrected. But when trying to explain how hearing aids are more than simple amplifiers I’m betting more people understand equalizer than understand compressor.

Heck, the only compressor I’m aware of is the one in my garage that inflates my tires and runs my nail gun! :smiley:

#13

I stand corrected too!

#14

What is TruHearing???

You may even want to ask your current audiologist if they are affiliated with a 3rd party. They will not tell you upfront since they can charge you more.
Not sure what you mean by this. The audiologist is part of a group audiology practice that my PCP referred me to when I told him that the tinnitus had definitely changed in the last 6 months and that it was now constant (as in 24/7), primarily one sided (where it had been random), and the noise itself had changed from “cicadas” to “high pitched hissy noise”.

The audiologist group focuses on all kinds of hearing/speech disorders as well as routine fitting of hearing aids. I’ve been impressed with both the audiologists that I’ve seen there. The first one, who did the initial routine hearing screening, was the one who suggested that I be seen by the second one for the full tinnitus screening. I’m not real eager to switch audiologists given that second one has done a really fine job (so far) of explaining what’s going on with my hearing and tinnitus and has been (in my opinion) very good at listening to my concerns and worries. She’s also been honest about what hearing aids can and cannot do as near as I can tell.

#15

TruHearing is an online seller that contracts with a local audiologist to deliver and provide limited followup – typically 3 visit. After that you’re on you own.

#16

I am aware of this. However my MIL has run into many problems that seem to be common from what I’ve been able to read. The audiologist I saw did not dismiss my concerns based on my MIL’s experience outright, but she also did say that I may very well not have any of those problems—with the right set of aids. (On another note: Even before I started down this path, hubby and I have been concerned that my MIL’s aids may not actually be the best match for her needs. But they are what was sold to her a year or two ago before I had started to do any serious research into hearing aids myself. Had I known then what I know now, I might have been able to have steered her in a better direction.)

For 1 and 2, hearing aids can slightly lower what it considers to be background noise (loud restaurants, for example), to give you a better chance of hearing close voices. It will definitely enrich your life! They (the pros) can set them up to boost soft sounds more than loud sounds. They don’t increase everything the same amount.
I know that right now I’m not “hearing” correctly, but I do think I need to clarify what my frustrations are and are not.

  1. I don’t seem to have much problem following conversations in reasonably noisy restaurants right now. In general following speech in noisy environments is not a huge issue—except for talking to my husband and son. And I can’t always follow what they’re saying even when there is no background noise. They both mumble—that’s not just my opinion. They tell each other they mumble. My daughter says they mumble. My sister-in-law says they mumble. But I also know that I have morn problems understanding hubby and son than other people do.

  2. Really loud restaurants are unbearable not because I can’t hear the conversation of the people at the table around me; they’re unbearable because once the noise gets to a certain level, it triggers a migraine headache. In other words, loud sound (whether noise or music or whatever) has been a migraine trigger for me ever since I was a teenager. And my subjective definition of “too loud for comfort” seems to be much lower than most of the people I know: I’m always the first one to stick my fingers in my ears to block noise/music when it gets too loud. (I never liked concerts for this reason when I was younger.)

For 3, RITE or RIC (Receiver in the Canal) is the more modern version and two quick advantages are that the body of the hearing aid can be slightly smaller, since the speaker is in your ear, and not in the body of the hearing aid, and you can swap out the receiver ($100) if you need more power (I actually did that).
It’s good to know that some modularity is being designed into these systems.

For 4, I wear glasses sometimes and I don’t have any problem, but my hair is very short. The glasses I wear have progressive lenses and a little magnetic clip-on sunglass part, so I don’t take off and put on throughout the day. Most of the time, though, I use multifocal contacts, which I love, being able to see in the distance and up close at the same time. Highly recommend the multifocal contacts.
I have shoulder length hair that I don’t want to cut. And my glasses are switched maybe a dozen times a day or more. And that’s not likely to change. I tried progressive bifocals and while they were quite nice for driving and the occasional read something brief, they just were not comfortable for the long hours I spend on the computer at work or when I’m grading papers or reading for more than 10 minutes. There was just too much head movement.

It is common to have a trial period where you pay for the hearing aids and wear them and have all the periodic adjustments and then, if they are just not right, you can return them. Costco has a 180 day return period. Other dispensers have 30-90 day trial periods. So you don’t have to make a perfect choice up front. You can switch brands or models later once you see how it goes.
The audiologist’s group has a 75 day trial period. Not as good as Costco, but as I’ve said, I’m not sure I want to switch audiologists since the one I’m currently working with seems to be very good and I’ve already come to trust her.

BUT, your brain takes some time to adjust to all the new sounds, so what sounds terrible at first will sound very pleasant once your brain adjusts. So, some people go through the trial and it doesn’t sound perfect, so they return them and try another model. Then, things start to sound better just because the brain has adjusted, so the second one gets the credit for being better when it may have just been the brain that got better.
The audiologist has mentioned that it does take time for the brain to adjust. I’m not expecting

It is also common to think other people mumble, when you have hearing loss. If everyone else says they mumble, then maybe they do mumble.
As I said before, it’s only a few people who I seem to have real trouble understanding, but among them are my husband and son. Others do say they mumble a lot—including hubby saying son mumbles and son saying hubby mumbles. However, I have more trouble than most understanding them. As for other people I interact with on a daily basis? I don’t usually feel like people are mumbling around me. In a class with 25 students, I typically have trouble understanding 2-3 of them. But that’s enough to cause problems at times, particularly when one of the soft-spoken students is someone who also has a lot of questions in class.

#17

I’ve used MyMathLab from Pearson when I’m teaching out of a book they publish. It’s ok for routine homework, but I still have to grade the written stuff, including the tests. More important, however, most of what I teach is upper division math courses where the homework is focused on proof-writing. And that’s got to be graded by hand: Proofs are to upper division mathematics courses what essays/papers are to upper division history or literature courses. And the calculus book we use for our main calculus sequence is not published by one of the major publishing houses, so there’s no on-line homework support.

Blackboard, in my opinion, is a mixed bag. Yes, it’s easy enough to post things that don’t have heavy math content directly to Blackboard. But things with a lot of math? I still have to write them in LaTeX or TeX, convert to pdf, and post the pdf’s. That’s ok for notes or answer keys, but it doesn’t actually save me any time. The on-line quiz/test/poll stuff that Blackboard has does not work well in math classes. I’ve tried the math editor and it’s frustrating. It takes longer to try to get the dang poll set up in Blackboard than it takes to just write the thing, xerox it, and grade it in a traditional way.

#18

That’s good to hear.

Modern hearing aids reduce the volume of sounds that approach your discomfort level. As someone above said, the aids operate as an equalizer, increasing the volume of frequencies according to your loss, and decreasing the volume of over-loud sounds and background noise. A lot of conversation is at about 50 dB, but a lot of consonant sounds are around 35 dB. You can shout an “O” nice and loud, but you can’t shout a “th” sound. So even when people speak louder you’re missing a lot of the soft high-pitched consonants, especially in your left ear.
What I don’t want is for all the stuff that I currently can hear at 50dB to be amplified up to 70+ dB since I start to feel pain by 80-85dB–as in when the audiologist did the pure tone sounds at 80-85dB I was telling her, that’s beginning to get loud enough to feel like it’s triggering a migraine headache.

In other words, I don’t want to be overwhelmed by daily sounds that I can currently hear without aids (including most conversation), but which are amplified up to “just below” the level that triggers migraines in an effort to allow me to hear softer sounds that I can’t currently hear. I know that’s likely to mean that there will be some compromises in what the aids can and cannot do for me.

Nowadays hearing aids are water repellent, but you want to try to keep them dry. As one of the others said stick them in your pocket if you’re caught in the rain, or simply carry a water-repellent cap with you. For hiking, I think a do-rag would be a good choice; easy to stuff in a pocket. Several people here say they’ve accidentally stepped in the shower with their aids in with no harm done, but I don’t push my luck.
Good ideas for when I’m out and about with a jacket that has pockets. I’ll have to think about this when I’m just wearing jeans and a t-shirt.

The higher-end hearing aids have strategies to help locate sounds.
This is important to me. That’s one of the areas where I know that my current hearing losis affecting things. I find it very difficult to locate noises that are near my hearing threshold, and many of these noises are things that I feel like I should be able to do a better job of locating. And that’s also one thing I have noticed in the classroom: I can hear a student speaking (and understand what they’re saying), but I can’t always identify which student is speaking. And that can be frustrating.

Your MIL probably doesn’t have that feature in her aids. If you go to Miracle Ear or a little storefront hearing aid store they will sell you what they’ve got regardless of what you actually need.
My guess is that you are right. I know she didn’t get the cheapest thing that Miracle Ear sells, but I also know that she just would not bring herself to pay for a more expensive pair of aids either. At the time I though she was being penny-wise and pound-foolish, but you just can’t argue with my MIL.

I went to an audiologist affiliated with a teaching hospital who carries all the major brands and doesn’t work on commission. She had me trial some mid-priced Widex aids and I’m very pleased with them. If I were still working I’d have shopped for higher-end aids which suppress background noise and help with location of sounds.
The audiologist group I went to sells Phonak, Resound, Oticon, Siemens, and Unitron hearing aids. Don’t know if they work on commission or not. The audiologist told me that because I am working and that I am working in a classroom, that I really should not go too cheap. She said that I’d probably be ok with mid-priced aids, but that I’d also probably be happier in the long run with higher-end aids that help with location of sounds.

I suggest you contact your state’s workers compensation agency to see if you qualify for some financial assistance from them. I wore a hearing aid when I was teaching in my 20s which I got for free through workers comp. And maybe talk to your human relations person where you work to see if there’s other help available. You need to hear to do your job.
I’ll have to look into that. It hadn’t dawned on me. Thanks for suggesting this!

#19

Thanks for clarifying this. So ideally a hearing aid needs to have both: An equalizer to adjust how to amplify different frequencies based on your hearing loss pattern and a compressor to not over amplify the loud sounds that you can already hear. Am I saying that correctly?

Robysue, I think that chances are well that you will profit from a hearing aid. My tinnitus got louder, too, and is now much softer again because of wearing aids (and less hearing effort as a result of wearing aids).
I am cautiously optimistic that hearing aids will help. I am worried that if I don’t do this “right”, however, that I could become more frustrated, which in the long run, will make it even harder. So I’m taking the time to do the research that I need to do now to maximize the chances that I’ll get it “right”. And “right” does NOT mean “perfect”. “Right” means good enough where I can tell there’s a positive difference after a reasonable adjustment period and that I can get to the point where I don’t think about the hearing aids any more than I think about my glasses. Which is basically not at all unless the pair I need is “lost”.

One thing is a bit difficult with your loss. I think in english, a loss where you hear low and very high frequencies well, the mids bad, is called cookie-bite loss. So your loss is a reverse-cookie-bite loss, meaning that you hear lows not so well, highs bad, but mids well. This is a bit uncommon.
That’s good to know. Maybe that’s why I don’t seem to have too many problems understanding conversation even with background noise?

For high-frequ loss only, you could well go with an open fit (open domes or a very open custom mold). But it might be that you get better results with a custom mold which is not too open. A very open fit cannot amplify low frequencies. So be aware that your experience might not be that fantastic right from the start.
I’ll be sure to listen to the audiologist’s recommendations on this very carefully.

Also—is this something that could be worked out in the 75-day trial period? In other words, if I started with an open fit and was unhappy about because things seemed too-high pitched or not balanced, would I be able to move to a less closed interface or a custom mold without too much trouble or additional cost?

#20

I want to thank everybody who replied to this thread. You all have given me much to think about. I’ve written individual replies where I had further questions or felt the need to clarify something.

Again, thank you for all your kind help.

To give you an update on the time line:

I did call the audiologist’s office back yesterday to ask some questions about the whole process. Some of my biggest concerns were alleviated. In particular, the fact that there’s a 75-day trial period where if things just don’t work out, I can get a full refund is important. It makes this whole process seem a bit more “risk-free”. I was impressed that the audiologist called back to talk to me. I have scheduled the initial hearing aid evaluation appointment on July 8. (My vacation and her vacation won’t let it happen any earlier than that.) We had another nice chat about what I would like out of the hearing aids, along with more counseling on what aids can and cannot do, as well as the reiteration that while I am likely to benefit from a properly fitted pair of aids, that I will also have to be realistic in my expectations of what they can do as well as being patient during the adjustment period.

As someone who went through a disastrous experience with adjusting to CPAP for sleep apnea almost 6 years ago, I know all about the need to be patient. But I also know that being my own advocate and doing a lot of research before getting the PAP machine were critical steps in turning that disastrous experience into an ultimately positive thing for my health. I just hope that this won’t be as miserable of an experience. I already know it’s going to be a heck of a lot more expensive. And the whole hearing aid thing seems to be just as opaque for a newbie as the CPAP thing.