My Hearing Aid Journey — Part II

What Did You Say?

Getting fitted for hearing aids and wearing them for the first day

It’s strange that perceived reality can vary from person to person and still all be accurate. “Normal” hearing for me was blurry and unclear, but since it was all I ever knew, I assumed it was the same for everyone.

That was all about to change.

Today was the day I began hearing clearly for the first time in a long time, or maybe ever. At my previous appointment, my audiologist recommended hearing aids to combat the battle I’d been fighting with my audial ability since I was a young child. I ended up choosing a middle-of-the-line option, small enough to be reasonably unnoticeable but a little more high-tech than the bare-bones offering of the lowest tier hearing aid. The flesh-toned options seemed to shout “OLD PERSON!” so I chose a bright white.

She taught me how to install the battery and turn them on, and helped me connect them to a phone app which allows me to turn them up or down, and even completely off. It’s nice to be able to turn them off but leave them in my ears so they don’t get lost. I am prone to losing things, after all (RIP my husband’s wedding ring). The app can also transmit phone calls directly to the hearing aids, but that feature annoys me and so I do not utilize it. It seemed cool at the time though, and if you’re not technologically challenged perhaps you’d appreciate it more than I do.

She adjusted the volume to only 80% of what I needed to hear normally, explaining that starting at 100% it would be jarring in the same way flipping lights on in a darkened room is jarring.

Even with the reduction, the noises I could now hear were overwhelming. Living in a land of muffled sounds seems normal until suddenly the noises coming at you are crystal-clear assaults on your previously unfettered senses. “Assault” seems like the best word for it, and though the connotation is negative it was a positive experience in many ways.

Walking away from the office wearing these costly, tiny machines seemed a bit like leaving the hospital with a baby. These things are valuable, seemingly fragile, and amazing — you’re just going to let me walk out of here with them? Are you sure I’m responsible enough to handle this?

The car radio blared at me; it hadn’t seemed loud before.

I drove home and rounded up my three youngest children and headed to pick up the older three from school.

Six children between the ages of two and ten are very, very loud, especially in an enclosed vehicle. I was aware, on some level, of the noise, but my hearing aids underscored the volume.

The difference was that where before there had been an indistinct mass of shrieking, raucous laughter, and jumbled stories, now I could pick out individual voices and follow a sentence from start to finish.

I thought my increased hearing ability would cause me more stress, but the opposite has been true. There are definitely moments where I have to ask a certain child to please for the love of God stop whatever annoyingly loud thing they are doing, but that’s just normal life with kids.

I had a conversation with my son in the car on the way home and didn’t have to ask him to repeat himself once. And I also didn’t become irritated and silent as I, ashamedly, have been wont to do after too much frustration of trying to listen and being unable to.

After dinner, we loaded up the kids and went to a park to walk and play a little bit. There were times at first where noises seemed a little bit echo-y outside, but after a few minutes my hearing aids seemed to adjust and everything was fine.

These hearing aids (probably most of them, nowadays) pick up surrounding noises and run programs to make your hearing experience ideal for your environment. There are different programs for crowded restaurants and quiet one-on-one conversations. Somehow it must have adjusted to the environment. I didn’t ever hear the wind in my ears or anything annoying like that while I was outside.

I can’t quite explain the difference of wearing hearing aids. The only way I can think of to describe it is that sounds are more full. Where I used to hear a jumble of noises I can pick out individual sounds. I don’t feel immediate stress when I’m trying to listen to someone talk.

On the first day of wearing hearing aids I only had to ask someone to repeat themselves once. I told my daughter I got a cake from the store, and as I was putting it into the refrigerator she said, “Is that berries?” And I said “What?” because I literally just told her that it was cake, surely I must have misheard. No. She really did want to know if it was berries. Ah, no, it’s still cake. The “Mommy eats cake after the kids go to bed,” type of cake, to be specific.

This is the second in a series about hearing aids. You can follow the series What Did You Say? to be notified when I add a new story. Part 1 is here and Part 3 is here. I’ll be adding more over the coming weeks about what my first days and weeks wearing hearing aids were like, and what life is like now, two years later.