Thanks so much toniinmi!!! You've given me food for thought before meeting with an audiologist in a couple of weeks. I live on the Oregon coast, where hills prevent cell reception in many areas, even what we laughingly refer to as "downtown." While tourist motels/hotels have WiFi for guests, most meeting rooms do not. I'm definitely in the "old" group you refer to (77), and I only had a flip phone until my partner in running a volunteer river surveying program showed me, in a steep wilderness canyon, how well smartphone GPS works (better than even really good GPS units). I have a IPhone 6 now, but my serious downturn in hearing due to Meniere's happened just after I got the phone, so I've been concentrating on getting my aid reset to work with the phone and learning to use both the phone and an Android tablet I bought in order to utilize Live Transcribe. The idea that anyone lives where there's zero cell reception just doesn't get through to young techs in Portland or Salem. We live in the spruce forest only a couple of blocks east of that big antenna (ocean), but we have zero cell reception at home, rely on cable and a modem for phone, 'net, TV. I need to be able to participate in both small group and large group meetings that cover technical stuff, like water rights, stream flows, fish genetics. Because Meniere's not only reduces hearing but adds distortion and recruitment, on a bad day I'm pretty clueless during any meeting.

Jump to this post