But people think they do, don’t they? They think you put them in your ears and, lo and behold, you can hear again. But it’s not like that. It’s become a bit of a cliché amongst people with hearing loss that hearing aids are not like spectacles, but it’s true. I’m short-sighted but when I put my glasses on I can see almost perfectly. Hearing aids??? No, no…..not like that at all.
Well, let me have a caveat here. They don’t work like glasses unless your hearing loss is really fairly mild. I meet people and I read about people who do, in fact, put their hearing aids in and experience a huge and immediate benefit. I’m sure when I got my first one, about twenty five years ago, it made a big difference. When there is just a relatively small amount of hearing loss to be tweaked amplifying the “hearing loss bits” works. It’s when the “hearing loss bits” get more substantial that the problems really kick in. Continue reading
Curlews first. A couple of weeks ago the guys from Med-El were back with us for another filming session, the last for several months; they are returning later this year for a “one year later” session and then we’re done. Nigel and I were sitting on the settee, talking about how things were going, three months after switch-on, when the subject of curlews came up. I don’t think that particular clip will get into the final version because Nigel said “have you heard curlews yet?” and I said “no, not yet”, which is not very thrilling for a film. But now I have.
The point of the advert is to promote one of the tiny, in-the-ear-canal hearing aids that are totally invisible when worn. They literally fit right down inside your ear, with nothing at all showing in or on the visible bits. Sadly, they are only suitable for people with the milder levels of hearing loss or I’d have put my name down. But the debate about the pros and cons of “invisible” hearing aids crops up quite often in the online deaf/hearing loss community, with a lot of people arguing that “invisible” equates to “something to be ashamed of”. Why should we be ashamed of our hearing loss, they say?
More than a bit deaf 