Report on new Kirkland aids from Costco: I have Meniere's and, due to the recruitment which is part of the Meniere's delightful pkg., my right ear was declared unaidable about 35 years ago. Four years ago, I bought an aid at Costco due to age-related hearing loss in my "good" left ear. Two years ago, the disease went bilateral, and I spent nearly a year virtually deaf as I couldn't tolerate wearing the aid in my "good" ear due to recruitment. Two weeks after having found a local doc willing to prescribe large doses of hormones, the former hearing level returned to my "good" ear and most of the recruitment was gone. It occurred to me that, if the recruitment was gone in one ear, it might have gone in the unaidable ear, so I scheduled a hearing test at Costco, which confirmed my thinking.
Last Tuesday, the new Kirkland aids were ready, and they've made a HUGE difference! As I had expected, I can now tell where sound is coming from because I'm hearing with both ears (which is still strange after decades of silence on the right). My first reaction when the tech turned the aids on was that she didn't need to shout in the soundproof booth. <g> My real hope is that hearing with both ears (even though the right doesn't hear nearly as much or as well) will help with speech discrimination. The Costco tech says I might benefit from scheduling an appt. with a speech pathologist, which is next on my list. For Thanksgiving I drove for a couple of hours to reach my daughter's house. The engine noise and road noise were bothersome, as I'd been driving in a very quiet vehicle. At one point, on a four-lane stretch of highway, a car passed me on the left--and I could actually HEAR that car! Walking out to my car after dinner, a plane went overhead, and, for the first time in nearly 40 years, I immediately looked at where it was in the sky! When I first take my aids out at bedtime, I have almost no tinnitus, although it does return later. However, I've not had the acoustic hallucinations that I've had every night, which is a great improvement.
So, it's always a good idea to ask for a new hearing test if there's a chance your situation has changed. I'm not the only person who's gained the ability to hear from a long-deaf ear at this Costco, either. Hearing aids keep improving, and the price keeps going down, especially with OTC aids coming: I paid $1,600 for the single aid four years ago, but only $1,400 for the pair last week--they had been $1,900 three weeks ago but Costco dropped the price in anticipation of the competition from OTC aids. An additional "goodie" is that this pair of aids is rechargeable. Of course, since I haven't worn an aid before in my right ear, it's still a little sore from having the dome in it, but I know that will go away in another week or so. Last year, the tech replaced the small dome in the aid in my left ear with a much larger one that concentrates sound directly into my ear, and it seemed very uncomfortable for a couple of weeks, but I soon didn't really feel it at all.
WHAT A NOISY WORLD IT IS!!!!