Reply to Tony and Julie: I fear that the process is going the wrong way, thanks to Covid. Lots of places are scheduling fewer appts. at greater intervals for safety, which means that lots of us get discouraged about making an appt. sometime in the future. Social distancing (I hate that term!) means that everyone is far more careful about being close to anyone else...including the audi or fitter in the tiny soundproof room. I recently bought new glasses. When I went back to pick them up, the person simply handed them to me...no checking to see that the prescription was correct or that the frames fit properly. Because I wear one aid instead of two, my glasses frames really need to be bent slightly out of shape on that side to accommodate the aid, but the person said, "you can come back later if you feel it needs an adjustment." Helpful! I've found that not only do the frames need to be adjusted to fit my aid, but they're not tight enough on my head, so I now have a new thing to do: push my multi-focal specs up every few minutes so that I'm looking through the correct part of the lenses.
We all crave "getting back to normal," but I fear that normal is a thing of the past for many things, even simple ones, like a person to bag your groceries while you pony up the store's card, any coupons, and method of payment. When I'm out of our small town, I shop in a discount grocery where it's set up for us to bag our own stuff. The clerks are trained to remind you when it's time to pay (and I ask them to wave at me because I don't hear well), and all goes smoothly. The only supermarket in our small town is a national chain, and it was not set up for self-bagging. They've removed the small bit of counter for writing checks or placing the card, coupons, and cash, and there's no convenient place to bag your own groceries, plus the clerks don't yet know how to handle a customer 10' away, so it's all inefficient--but, once Covid is a thing of the bad past, I'll bet that they won't go back to providing bagging service!
Covid has been a fine excuse for everyone to deal more remotely, offer less service, and I don't think it will go back to the way it was. That means that we'll need to fight harder to get more realistic places to try aids before leaving the clinic or store. I hear "too well" right now for a CI in my long-useless ear; in a sound booth without background noise, I comprehend 55% of simple sentences. That's a far cry from the real world where there are often several kinds of noise and the sentences aren't always simple. We need to have realistic places to try out aids and get them adjusted. We also need to have enough time to ask all the questions we have.

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