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Hearing Loss: Come introduce yourself and connect with others
Hearing Loss | Last Active: 3 days ago | Replies (1517)Comment receiving replies
I had mild hearing loss starting as a child and into middle age. At age 50 I started wearing hearing aids and adapted quite well to them. I have had a number of brands including Widex, Resound and Oticon. About 6 years ago I switched from in the ear to behind the ear hearing aids. The last in the ear pair I had were Oticon. These were followed by Oticon behind the ear and I was unhappy with them for the entire three years. I simply did not hear, whatever adjustments were made. I am now at the point of having to decide whether to accept new Oticon S1 (major problem of noise in noise) or to reject the Oticon and find a replacement. I am hoping participating in Mayo Clinic Connect will help me make this decision..
Replies to "I had mild hearing loss starting as a child and into middle age. At age 50..."
@judithmct Hi Judith, welcome to Connect.
Keeping in mind that hearing aids will never replicate natural hearing, if your audiologist is good he/she should be able to provide better hearing than it sounds as if you have gotten. My hearing loss has advanced to having trouble with speech comprehension, which is impossible for any hearing aids to compensate for, but some are better than others.
I did have Phonaks but three years ago I changed to Oticon Opn 1 HAs because at the time they were the best in providing the best speech recognition. They were definitely than Phonaks. I did love the Phonaks for restaurants, etc., they were very directional.
I had some problems for a while with my Oticons that my audiologist was not able to fix so she called on Oticon twice and the representative from there came to help. They finally decided to return those hearing aids and get me replacement hearing aids. Problem was solved. I understand that the newer Oticons are even better with speech recognition.
As others have said, you always have a trial period during which you can return the HAs. There may be some charge but it is not nearly the cost of the HAs. Also, how confident are you of your audiologist? Have you considered getting a second opinion? I trust my audiologist and I trust her to know my hearing well enough that she will make the best recommendation.
If you are in or close to NYC I would highly recommend Dr. Ellen LaFargue at the Center for Hearing and Communication. My daughter was working there at one point and when I needed new HAs she convinced me to go to her (I live in NH) so I did. Her recommendation turned out to be exactly what my audiologist here recommended, and Dr. LaFargue is very good and very highly regarded. She was the audiologist who recommended the Phonaks, that was quite a while ago.
JK
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Can your audiologist not make a recommendation of a hearing aid with a trial period of from 30 to 45 days so that you don't get stuck with one that you are unhappy with?