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
