I rely on my wife to be my "'Hearing Ear Puppy" in many situations. She knows I have problems with speech, especially with someone soft-spoken or with a thick accent, so she finds a way to repeat what is necessary.

As a musician I've always used custom fit, high fidelity, musician's ear plugs to keep the volume hitting my ears at 85db or less. A misdiagnosed (three times) allergic reaction to dust mites eventually took about 70db out of the high end before they figured out what was causing it.

Wearing ear plugs on stage now makes it impossible to hear comments from the audience. Add another 15db of attenuation and it's useless.

I keep the stage levels under 90dba and turn my aids down. Since the dome inside my ear is solid except for 2 small vents, it acts as an ear plug, and with all the experience I have, I can estimate 85dba very well. So other than age factors, I'm not damaging my ears more than the dust mites did.

Between songs, I have the connect clip and if need be, I can discretely turn the volume back to normal and have a better chance at understanding what is said. My DW is my duo partner, and she fields a lot of that for me.

But for the past 20 years, I have my duo partner go out in the audience area with a sound level meter when we do the sound check. We do this before they arrive. We try to pin the sound to peak about 80dba so that we don't damage the ears of our audience members. Since our market is senior citizens they usually appreciate that. And if they ask us to turn it up we will -- the customer is always right -- but then if they damage their ears it's their choice, not ours.

So the loss complicates my profession and compromises my life, but at least I'm still alive, and can still play music because I hear pitches Ok. There are a lot of people with worse disabilities so in the end I'm not doing too bad.

Bob