I know most of you guys probably can't relate, but I'm just blowing off a little steam...so bear with me.
Went to the doctor's today and picked up my new hearing aid - and despite the fact that it's "adjusted" to compensate for my hearing loss, I can't stand it. It sounds like it's adjusted to compensate for the frequencies I *can't* hear, and to supress the ones that I can. That in and of itself isn't too bad (most every hearing aid I've had has come from the factory or the Dr.'s office like this) - the problem is that I can't do anything about it. On my old ones, the controls consisted of a pair of screws located under a little hatch on the back of the hearing aid. When I got it back from the doctor, I could use an eye-glass screw driver to adjust the thing to the way I was *used* to hearing; the way my old hearing aids had been adjusted.
This new one, however, is digital - which means the only way to adjust it is to re-program the stupid thing. I can hear voices, and that's about it. most other sounds are compressed and / or simply reduced, because the aid considers them to be "noise". This includes music - I can hear the singer, and sometimes the baseline; everything else is either so muffled I have to strain to hear it, or it just sounds like so much static. To make it even better, what I *can* hear doesn't even sound right. Everybody's voice has this tinny, sharp sound to it. Other sounds - like the tapping of the keys as I type this, a door clicking shut, the snap sound that a stapler makes, somebody dropping something on a hard surface, etc - come through so sharply that it's just painful.
And all the doctor says is "this is the way it's supposed to be! you'll get used to it!" . Well, thanks for the help, but if this is the way things are supposed to sound, I'll stick to being deaf (well, nearly so, anyway) :|
Oh well. I'll give it a week or so and see what happens. I've already been into her office twice today
If things don't get any better, I'm going to take my old one in and see how closely she can match the settings on that thing - whether that's the way it's supposed to be adjusted, or not.
Nate
Went to the doctor's today and picked up my new hearing aid - and despite the fact that it's "adjusted" to compensate for my hearing loss, I can't stand it. It sounds like it's adjusted to compensate for the frequencies I *can't* hear, and to supress the ones that I can. That in and of itself isn't too bad (most every hearing aid I've had has come from the factory or the Dr.'s office like this) - the problem is that I can't do anything about it. On my old ones, the controls consisted of a pair of screws located under a little hatch on the back of the hearing aid. When I got it back from the doctor, I could use an eye-glass screw driver to adjust the thing to the way I was *used* to hearing; the way my old hearing aids had been adjusted.
This new one, however, is digital - which means the only way to adjust it is to re-program the stupid thing. I can hear voices, and that's about it. most other sounds are compressed and / or simply reduced, because the aid considers them to be "noise". This includes music - I can hear the singer, and sometimes the baseline; everything else is either so muffled I have to strain to hear it, or it just sounds like so much static. To make it even better, what I *can* hear doesn't even sound right. Everybody's voice has this tinny, sharp sound to it. Other sounds - like the tapping of the keys as I type this, a door clicking shut, the snap sound that a stapler makes, somebody dropping something on a hard surface, etc - come through so sharply that it's just painful.
And all the doctor says is "this is the way it's supposed to be! you'll get used to it!" . Well, thanks for the help, but if this is the way things are supposed to sound, I'll stick to being deaf (well, nearly so, anyway) :|
Oh well. I'll give it a week or so and see what happens. I've already been into her office twice today
If things don't get any better, I'm going to take my old one in and see how closely she can match the settings on that thing - whether that's the way it's supposed to be adjusted, or not.Nate
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