Don’t know about yours but my audi told me that my molds were designed so that when properly inserted the ball would just be tucked inside in the base of the valley formed between the inner side of my tragus and the concha surface - so the photo of my ear that I took I actually might not have pushed the mold in quite as far as designed. If anyone is going to notice anything, I think it would be the wires. The rod attached to my mold is actually very stiff and springy for its size. If yours was the same and fit relatively the same way into that tragus/concha valley, you might have cut off a fair amount of the retention factor that came with your molds.
I agree, the pull rods ensure deep placement at the
second turn of the canal. Otherwise you might not
be inclined to insert it deep enough fearing not getting it out without damage.
Even with the rod attached and putting a good bit of pressure on it, it made no difference. It did not help the mold to go in any deeper or remain there. As far as I can recall at least! I had it with the rod for a week or more, and my audiologist said it was just a handle and served no other purpose.
Then a bigger mould that actually fits is your answer. This doesn’t fit the job.
Might just be random variation in ear shape but with me I can feel the rod curve through almost 90 degrees in each ear. For a mold to go backwards by itself, it would have to overcome serious resistance of each rod bent against its tragus/concha valley. Could be differences in the way Widex and ReSound design their molds or how the particular designers of each of our molds worked from the impressions taken to design our molds.
I took a picture of my right ear looking straight up at the mold into the canal as much as I could. The picture is labeled as for the quoted post #1 (crux helicis entrapment), #2 (receiver wire pressing against inside tragus surface), and #3 (removal rod & bulb for mold pressed against tragus/concha inner valley - not curved as much as I previously claimed but obviously curved and pressing against valley). The picture was taken as a selfie capturing the reflection in an enlarging concave grooming/cosmetics mirror (my real right ear is in the upper right of the picture) and enhanced in Photoshop Elements. The reddish blob in the tragus/concha valley is the shadow of the camera flash. I gotta tell you, focusing on the reflection in a mirror with one hand while holding the mirror in another is pretty tough (the wife is off visiting a newborn grandson and trying to help the new 1st time mom get some sleep!).
@Bones - Note how almost completely invisible the knob on the end of the removal stick/string is now that this model is properly positioned within my ear canal (the previous picture was of the left ear and not as behind it-because the ear pictures in the two different posts are both MIRROR images, apparent leftness and rightness are reversed in the images shown).
Because of the mirror angle, etc., the ear is foreshortened left to right as compared to top to bottom. In real life, my ears are not so Mr. Spock-like.
Not an ad for ReSound but perhaps anyone having custom molds made might be interested in ReSound’s recipe for getting a suitable impression from which to make a good mold.
RESOUND TRUFIT IMPRESSION
October 25, 2017
THE 16/4 RULE.
https://resoundconnect.com/blogs/gn-hear-and-now/impressions-article
There is also an Audiology Online course (which anyone can take for free) that shows how impressions are made in a video and reviews the 16:4 rule and good and bad impressions (requires a browser running Adobe Flash, which Microsoft browsers still permit on a case-by-case basis with user approval):
https://www.audiologyonline.com/E/25843/384908/4450167f37ad55febc
Dr. Cliff has a YouTube video praising the properties of Phonak custom earmolds (sponsored by Phonak!).
The same link was included above my first ear picture (post #6) but I only used the link text to conserve screen real estate.
Can’t see your hearing loss, but most of my severe/profound/CI candidate patients are in power BTEs, not RICs.
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Neville I appreciate that suggestion/observation. I just checked out the difference on a few websites.
What I have in photos above is RIC?
During one of my cochlear implant consults the audiologist put a different hearing aid on me to see how I tested with it and I think it was a BTE. The difference in quality of hearing her voice was huge. It was a Phonak Bolero Q-90 SP BTE. Is that the kind of Aid I should be considering?
If I had to take a guess, yes. The Naida is Phonak’s power line.
And with a Power BTE are there options and choices to be made regarding what kind of piece or mold goes inside the ear? Any options you’d recommend?
I’m meeting with my audiologist next week and will bring list of questions.
ReSound is compatible with Cochlear Americas’ newest processor – with some ReSound HA’s you are able to use the same app on an iPhone and coordinate better, so if I need to get another HA it will likely be a ReSound.
The forum has a lot of information and a lot of user experience. You might want to try a search on something like “ReSound Phonak Oticon Widex profound loss” or some smaller combination of those brands with “profound loss” and see what people say about the various super power or ultra power models. One important thing to keep in mind is that the very high-powered aids do not have the same frequency range as medium and low power aids. If you have lots of high frequency dead zones that won’t matter so much as you might be using frequency shifting to shift higher frequencies that you have no possibility of hearing directly to lower frequency region where you still have hearing left, i.e., moving all frequencies down on the scale, relatively). If you enter your audiogram in your user profile that would help experienced users including professionals like Neville judge where you’re currently at in the hearing spectrum. You can usually find PDF versions of the User Guide for each HA brand you might be considering on their consumer or their provider websites, e.g., resound.com vs. resoundpro.com, and typically in the back of the PDF user manual, you will find a detailed rundown on the properties of models for each brand.
The Audiology Online course by a Westone rep most recently referenced by skymac11 in his/her post above shows that a variety of molds can be used with a sound bore or sound tube used with high powered devices. I’m sure that’s probably true with molds made by a variety of manufactures including ReSound, Phonak, and the others.
In my ignorance I may be confusing super power RIC devices with ultrapower BTE - looks like the latter HA type have a pretty good frequency fitting range from 100 Hz to 8 kHz. Some of the RIC super power go up to less than 5 kHz.
Here’s an interesting review of ultrapower BTE devices and considerations of having profound loss. Sounds like a good fitting mold that prevents feedback leakage is essential to avoid going crazy. Be interesting to hear what any users with profound hearing loss on the forum have to say about all this - does the review give the ReSound ENZO too many brownie points for its connectivity? (and then there is the ENZO 3D and all that jazz).
The article ought to be pretty current. It’s (last up)dated March 12, 2019, although sometimes web page dates (and reviews) can be bogus.
I had some problems with ear molds working their way out of the ear. So my audiologist had my custom molds made with “ear locks”.
Here is my hearing test from 2 weeks ago, showing my most recent drop. Despite a number of meds I’m on with my ENT, plus being treated for Lyme, no improvement since then. This is for my stronger ear and the ear that I presently use my Widex hearing aid with and the one I need a better custom mold for. Sounds like I may also need a BTE instead. The other ear is worse in all areas.
My final question for those of you who have been tracking this conversation – based on my hearing test does it look like a different type of hearing aid, a BTE, would give me better results than the Widex Evoke (with the custom mold that keeps popping out) I am using right now?
I am seeing my audiologist next week and will ask her the same question.
Thanks for all the advice and encouragement!
You could always have it remade if its not fitting right
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