At first I just blamed James for mumbling and didn’t think anything else of it, but as it turns out, there IS something wrong with my hearing.
Today is D-Day…well that should probably be HA-Day: Hearing Aid Day…today I get my first pair of hearing aids.
Now that I’m over the initial shock of it all, I’m okay with it. I think.
For so long I’ve been ignoring that little noise in my head, that unwanted song stuck on repeat…except that this one never stops…I just get differing volumes of the same noise; ringing, clicking and popping. This is Tinnitus and I didn’t realise that it wasn’t supposed to be there!
I’d never thought about it because as far as I know, it’s always been there. I’d never had a conversation about it because I didn’t realise it wasn’t everyone else’s normal. It’s my normal so I assumed that it was also everyone else’s normal too.
And then I realised that I wasn’t hearing all of every conversation. At first I just missed little bits; a word here and there, or the tone for context. But then came meetings where a few people were having a conversation nearby and all the speech blurred into one cacophony of noise. I couldn’t distinguish who was actually talking, or whether they were talking to me.
I thought it was a little bit funny at first; going for the hearing tests, getting referred to the hospital ENT department. It was funny. But then it was real; there is nothing else the hospital can do, so back to the Audiologist, more hearing tests…hearing aids.
Today is the culmination of the last few months of appointments and consultations, and it’s a bit scary actually. So I’m writing it all down.
Hearing Aid fitting
8:30am – After a brief explanation of what all of the many bits in the box do, how to clean these bad boys, which one goes in which ear, and what NOT to do with them, I’ve got an odd sort of plastic neck weight on. Apparently this will connect to the hearing aids and will help to make sure that they’re doing what they’re supposed to.
Cue a little bit of trial and error with the ear bungs (apparently I have tiny ear canals), and I’m wearing my hearing aids. It’s not too bad so far. I sound really tinny but everything else is okay. Not too loud.
Now, in order to test that everything is working properly I get the weird plastic neck weight AND a lovely set of gummy tube-wires into my ear canals, as well as the hearing aids. With everything in there, my ears feel quite uncomfortable.
8:50am – The Audiologist plays random beeps, speech and a sort of white noise and then a plethora of wavy graphs appear on her computer screen. Thankfully this shows that everything is doing what it should be, and this means the gummy ear tubes and the plastic neck weight can go away. Yay. I’m just left with the hearing aids abusing my ear canals, which isn’t that bad… apparently i’ll get used to it.
9:15am – Cue the payments and a few last minute questions and i’m off into the big bad world with the most expensive thing i’ve ever bought.
Leaving the Audiologist
9:20am – To be honest, the only feeling I’m feeling at the moment is that the hearing aids are weird in my ears. They feel like I’ve rammed something into my ear and now it’s stuck.
The car is louder than normal. I made sure that I’d turned my music down as I wasn’t sure how loud they’d be…I didn’t want to deafen myself. Ha. The car journey to work is otherwise uneventful.
I have a bag of stuff for the hearing aids…much more than I thought I’d have!
At work
9:30am – My car door is REALLY loud. Do I normally slam the door that hard?
9:35am – Blimey, the office is noisy!
9:37am – I can hear the radiator…does it usually swoosh about? I sit less than two foot away from the radiator and i don’t recall hearing it swooshing about before…and my shoes squeak! I had noticed that they vibrate when I walk but I didn’t realise the sound was audible. How annoying.
10:05am -I can hear people talking to me! This is amazing. We’re having a morning tea in one of the meeting rooms and normally I struggle to distinguish the speech from all the other noise.
11:00am – The lady that sits next to me starts talking and I can hear her. I normally have to get in really close to be able to hear her because she’s really quiet. Right now I’m having no issues at all. Wohoo.
11:30am – Someone has crisps. I can’t figure out who, but it’s definitely not one of the people that I sit next to.
11:35am – It’s the guy who sits four desks down from me. It’s really loud.
1:00pm – There’s a strange clomping noise…its someone walking up the corridor outside. Ha.
4:50pm – There is a bird outside that just won’t shut up!
5:00pm – HOME TIME. I’m excited to go home and see what y house sounds like. LOL.
At home
5:30pm – WHAT is that whirring noise?
5:35pm – Okay, so lets see whats in the bag then…omg there’s SO much! I am never going to need all this, surely?! There are so many bits!
So…we have leaflets, A cleaning pack (apparently they’ll need cleaning each night…groan!), a tiny dehumidifier, a charging pod/power pack…this ones quite cool actually; they sit in this and charge. It generally will be plugged into the wall and left overnight, but it holds about three charges so I can take it away without all the wires on a long weekend or short trip. The hearing aids themselves.
There are SO many noises that I haven’t realised were there. It’s really putting it all into perspective for me. I honestly didn’t realise my hearing was this bad. How have I missed this?
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