Feedback

Perhaps it is the new hearing aids I bought in January or maybe too much rain, but as I was walking home from the bus yesterday I landed on this idea for a blog. My new hearing aids are called Epoq, made by Oticon and I also bought a gadget called a Streamer. With the streamer, my hearing aids function as headphones for my cell phone. When the technology works it is great. And I am learning more about how to use this equipment every day. But right now the rain is a problem and I live in Portland OR where rain has been constant. I put my jacket hood up when it rains, and with my old aids that was no problem. These aides give me feedback (loud squealing) with the hood up. Sometimes I can coax the feedback to go away, but not always. I am not excited about having to keep track of an umbrella!

I have had hearing aids since I was in law school in my late 20's, but didn't start wearing them consistently until my hearing got worse a few years later. I'm on my fourth or fifth pair now. I have seen my audiologist for so long her children have grown from preschoolers to driving. I have a mixed type of hearing loss - mostly sensory-neural but with a topdressing of otosclerosis. I had a stapedectomy about 18 years ago, and a clean up a couple of years ago. My hearing has gotten worse recently, so much so that when I take my hearing aids out I am in a very quiet place, a place where I don't hear much of anything. That's not to say quiet is a bad thing - I like quiet, and prefer it to noise. But after my last hearing test, my husband and I both asked the same question - should we be learning sign language?