In my quest for new CICs (I've been wearing two for the past six years), I came across an audiologist/dispenser who seems ADAMANT about not fitting CICs into my left ear, but an ITC (In The Canal), the immediately larger model of aid. He claims that we have to compensate not only for my hearing loss, but the "air to bone gap" that I have.
While I know that with my hearing loss I'd be compromising some sound in speech frequencies by using CICs (see my audiogram below), and I was told this even before I got my current aids, I've never heard that I risk doing MORE damage to my hearing.
My hearing loss hasn't changed for most of my life, and certainly not in the past six years since I got my last audiogram done. So it's only a hypothetical risk, which may or may not happen.
Has anyone else heard anything like this? I've heard that ears can be 'exercised' to some extent -- ie: my stronger left ear could compensate for what is lost from the right ear -- but also that hearing is cumulative and it's the TOTAL dB that matter, not each individual ear.
I'm in my early 30s and obviously appearance is important to me, otherwise I wouldn't consider CICs. I'm almost ready to get larger aids in some flashy colour so they deliberately stick out and that way I don't hide anything or care about people's impressions, but I don't feel quite ready to do that yet.
Any thoughts?
Here's my audiogram:
http://img21.imagevenue.com/img.php?loc=loc95&image=99706_2006_Jan_Audiogram_Small.jpg
(solid line is the air conduction test, dashed line is the bone conduction test)
While I know that with my hearing loss I'd be compromising some sound in speech frequencies by using CICs (see my audiogram below), and I was told this even before I got my current aids, I've never heard that I risk doing MORE damage to my hearing.
My hearing loss hasn't changed for most of my life, and certainly not in the past six years since I got my last audiogram done. So it's only a hypothetical risk, which may or may not happen.
Has anyone else heard anything like this? I've heard that ears can be 'exercised' to some extent -- ie: my stronger left ear could compensate for what is lost from the right ear -- but also that hearing is cumulative and it's the TOTAL dB that matter, not each individual ear.
I'm in my early 30s and obviously appearance is important to me, otherwise I wouldn't consider CICs. I'm almost ready to get larger aids in some flashy colour so they deliberately stick out and that way I don't hide anything or care about people's impressions, but I don't feel quite ready to do that yet.
Any thoughts?
Here's my audiogram:
http://img21.imagevenue.com/img.php?loc=loc95&image=99706_2006_Jan_Audiogram_Small.jpg
(solid line is the air conduction test, dashed line is the bone conduction test)