I get quite a few emails from people asking which hearing aid is best but no-one has ever asked which audiologist is best. I think the second question is just as important as the first, maybe even more so.

When you buy a hearing aid you are paying for the audiologists time as well as for the hearing aid itself. The time costs more than the piece of plastic you will put in your ear and what’s really important for you is that once you’ve been fitted with your new hearing aid you are very likely to be needing a fair bit of that time to make adjustments to the new sounds you are hearing.

You could buy the most expensive hearing aid in the world and get little benefit from it if you don’t have an audiologist who’s prepared to take the time to alter it to your own personal needs. All modern digital aids have a vast array of settings and can be programmed to sound completely differently for each person. Of course, your audiologist needs to programme it to compensate for your hearing loss, but even after that your aid can be made to sound as differently as you want it to be.

Don’t be afraid to use as much of that time that you’ve paid for. You might get lucky and walk out after your first fitting and live happily ever after with your new aids – I’ve never done that, not once. Getting used to wearing a new aid can be tough and takes time, especially with your first pair – and when I say it takes time, I’m talking weeks or months, not hours or days.

A few guidelines for picking the right audiologist

• Make sure they ask you about yourself before they recommend a hearing aid. They should be asking about the kind of environments you are normally in, what you want to hear better, what kind of things you are having trouble hearing at the moment, how you feel about wearing aids, what you are prepared to wear. That kind of stuff.
• Make sure they explain your hearing test results to you so that you know how bad you hearing loss is. I always like to get a copy of my test results.
• Ask lots of questions and be happy with the answers.
• You might have a particular aid recommended to you – find out why that one is being recommended and which others are also suitable for you. Seems unlikely that there would only be one suitable for you so find out about them all.
• Make sure you like them! You are going to be making more visits so you have to get on.
• Find out what the after-sales service is, how often they are available and at what times, and how often are they expecting to see you after your fitting?
• Make sure they are listening to what you are asking for. They have the knowledge and the expertise to give you the best chance to hear but they don’t know what you are hearing – tell them what’s working for you and what isn’t and make sure they take that into account.

Really, you’ve just got to feel comfortable that you are getting the information and guidance that you need to start getting the most from your new hearing aid.

Amplifon have produced a very nice infographic about hearing loss. From their site:

Admitting you have hearing loss can be very difficult. Nobody wants to admit they are getting older, but with up to 4 million people in the UK suffering in silence, everyone has a part to play when it comes breaking the stigma associated with hearing problems.

The first step in helping a loved one or yourself is education, so we have put together this visual infographic to help everyone understand more about hearing problems from the facts to the stigmas, to the solutions. We believe that armed with this knowledge you can play a valuable part in ensuring hearing problems are resolved early, and as a family.

Some questions for you, dear reader. I’d love to get some responses to this, I get lots of viewers but rarely any commenters, would love to know what you think!

1. Are you happy with the way your hearing aids sound?

2. If so, how long did it take for the dispenser/audiologist to set your hearing aids up so that you were happy with them? Did they have to re-programme your aids at all to get them how you wanted them?

3. Did you buy the first pair of hearing aids you tried?

4. If you are not happy with the sound, what do you think went wrong and what could be done to make them right for you?

Thanks!

The vuvuzela is the noise weapon of choice for fans at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

The long, plastic, trumpet-shaped vuvuzela was found to emit an ear-piercing noise of 127 decibel — louder than a lawnmower (90 decibels) and a chainsaw (100 decibels).

You only need to expose your ears to this level of noise for a few minutes to run the risk of some damage to your hearing. Just a few minutes, and the fans are blasting these things for the entire game, from start to finish – that’s 90 minutes of extreme noise.

The Hear The World organisation tested the vuvuzela in a sound proofed room and compared it to alongside other popular instruments used be sports fans, it was the loudest.

1. Vuvuzela: 127dB
2. Air-horn: 123.6dB
3. Samba drum: 122.2dB
4. Referee whistle: 121.8dB
5. Two fans singing: 121.6dB
6. Gas horn: 121.4dB
7. Cowbell: 114.9dB
8. Wooden rattle: 108.2dB
9. Inflatable fan-sticks: 99.1dB

Remember, the vuvuzela is so loud that you only need to be in earshot someone blasting on one for a few minutes to risk damaging your ears. If you are attending a World Cup game then get yourself some ear plugs or other hearing protection.

I always use subtitles when I’m watching a TV show or a movie. I don’t really need to, I have a moderate-severe bilateral hearing loss and I could turn the TV up enough so that I could hear it.

I mostly watch TV when my wife and daughter have gone to bed so obviously I don’t want the TV blaring out and waking them up, that’s one reason why I always use subtitles, the other reason is:

After a hard day of: straining to hear stuff, trying to stay in the conversation, asking people to repeat themselves, bluffing and guessing what’s been said, just saying yeah when I’ve no idea what they said, reading lips, trying to work out who is talking and trying to work out how loud I’m talking. It’s nice to not have the hassle for a little while.

It’s nice to have some peace and quiet. No stress, no worries about missing anything, the words are right there for me to read without any effort at all.

I walked into the office yesterday morning and walked straight into a conversation between a few people. I said hello and answered a question from one of them and then walked over to my desk. I took my coat off, grabbed my cup to make a tea (I’m English, we do a lot of tea), turned around and….

I got the look from a few people

That look that means I instantly know that someone has spoken to me and I didn’t hear them.

I’m not sure I can describe the look but if you’re hard of hearing that I bet you know what I’m talking about? The look is kind of part embarrassment, part indignation and part amusement. In fact, I don’t really know what it is but the look is always the same, no matter who’s doing it. The picture on the left is about the closest I could find!

I’ve been getting the look for years. It used to annoy me a lot when I was younger, I would get really upset and either storm off or have a bit of a go at the person giving it. But I’ve learned to brush it off, in the office yesterday I just said, “you what?”, answered the question after it was repeated and went to get my tea.

One thing I still don’t get though is why do I still get the look? I mean, everyone knows I’m partially deaf and I wear hearing aids – certainly most of the people having the conversation in the office yesterday morning know. So what is the look for? Is it because they don’t know how to respond after I’ve not heard them? Are they too embarrassed to speak up and re-ask the question? Did they think I was ignoring them on purpose? Was it just funny that I didn’t hear? Guess there’s only one way to find out, ask them.

Do you ever get the look? How do you handle it?

I’m usually fairly relaxed about my hearing loss and people’s attitude towards it. It’s doesn’t bother me overly if someone decides to use a comically loud, slow and patronising voice if I ask them to repeat themselves – I just tell them they don’t need to do that. It doesn’t bother me if someone decides that repeating themselves is too much trouble – they probably aren’t worth listening too anyway.

But there’s one thing, a few little words, that make me want to spit blood, it’s probably said innocently but it’s irritating beyond belief. Brace yourself for this:

“Oh, he just hears what he wants to”

You really think I pick and choose what I want to hear? That I turn it on and off as I please? I wish I had that luxury. I really wish I had that choice. That’s like pointing to someone in a wheelchair and saying, “meh, she’s just a bit lazy, likes a sit down”.

New York rapper Foxy Brown recently opened up about her deafness with talk show host and comedian, Mo’Nique. The female MC spoke about how she went deaf a few years ago and how she has now managed to regain her hearing.

Foxy Brown said: “It was 100 percent gone, overnight. They don’t even know why. I have the best surgeon in the world who specializes in ear problems and the operations and surgeries and Wednesday night [in 2005], I was out shooting the cover of XXL with Jay-Z, Kanye West and LeBron, and Thursday morning I woke up and couldn’t hear anything. I was completely deaf. 100 percent.

“I just knew that God had got me then. Because I kept running and dodging him and he kept giving me signs and little warnings, and they say God will get you first in private and if he don’t get you then, then he’ll get you in public.”

The gossip Web site TMZ.com is reporting that in response to the rampant use of vuvuzela horns during World Cup soccer matches, earplug sales have exploded since the group stage matches began in South Africa last week. 

TMZ has said it spoke with to two major earplug suppliers based in South Africa — Ear Plugs Online and Sheppard Medical — and each are boasting increases in sales.

A rep for EPO told TMZ their sales are up 121% — having sold more than 10,000 sets of plugs and counting.  Sheppard Medical said they’ve moved more than 400,000 sets since kickoff, a 20% increase.

Both companies said they wouldn’t be surprised if they each sold over one million sets by the end of the World Cup.

SOURCE: TMZ via Hearing Review.

I have good hearing days and bad hearing days. Today was a good day, I had a conversation with someone who was a fair distance away across our open-plan office – I heard them easily and I realised that I’m not often able to understand them at that distance. I don’t think my ability to hear fluctuates from day to day but there’s definitely good spells and then not so good ones.

When you have a hearing loss and understanding conversation is a common struggle then the little drops in hearing ability can make a big difference to your communication. To your mood too, I’m definitely happier and more talkative when I’m more easily in the conversation.

I don’t think it’s my actual hearing that is fluctuating, I think it’s other things like how tired I am, if I’m more awake and alert then I concentrate more on the conversation. Tiredness makes my tinnitus worse too, which definitely makes a difference. Getting sweaty ears – I’ve noticed I hear less after I’ve been for a run or played football. If I’ve got some wax in or around my aids – even a small bit can tip me from just about hearing someone to not quite being able to. And batteries too, I’m not sure if I’m imagining this one but I’m sure that the volume my aids are producing dips on occasions just before the batteries are about to die. Seems like there’s a lot of little variables that make a difference.

One thing that causes a huge problem is catching a cold. A cold is annoying for everyone – for me the sniffles and headaches are nothing compared to having to get through a week of hearing even less.

Of course differing levels of background noise will make an obvious difference, but I think there’s much more to it than that. I notice my good and bad days in the office where the noise levels are pretty constant. It’s all the little things.