Second Hearing Aid - WOW!

I don't post on this forum very often, but since the last few days have been somewhat life-altering, I thought I'd share my story in case anyone else might benefit.

Here's a quick history. I had a "slight" hearing loss in the low frequencies only in my right ear from aged 4 until my twenties. (I've since been diagnosed with EVA in that ear only.) Until two years ago, the last time I'd had my hearing tested was at age 20, when I still had only a slight LF loss in my right ear and no hearing loss in my left. In my early thirties, I realized that the hearing loss in my right ear had gotten a bit worse, but it wasn't really bothersome as I wasn't having any difficulty understanding speech.

About two years ago, shortly after the birth of my son, I realized that I could no longer understand what my husband was saying if I was lying on the bed with my left ear down. He'd apparently noticed this since we'd gotten married 3 years prior but had never pointed it out. So, I finally bit the bullet and went for a hearing test in June of 2013. The result? Mild-to-moderate hearing loss (a flattish loss) in my right ear and a mild hearing loss in my good (left) ear! I was totally surprised about the loss in my left ear. I had no idea!!! So I got a hearing aid for my right ear in 2013. You can read my other posts on this forum to find out how difficult that adjustment was for me

Over the last year or so, the hearing in my good ear (my left) has remained the same (objectively) as it was two years ago. But subjectively, I've been feeling like I'm having a harder time hearing. I asked my audiologist a few times in the last year-and-a-half about trialling a second hearing aid, but she didn't think it would help much. At my last hearing test, I insisted on trialling a second aid. She agreed, but thought I shouldn't expect a "wow" factor.

I got my second hearing aid Thursday, and there's been a HUGE "wow" factor!!!! I didn't realize how muffled everything has been until now. Suddenly conversations are crisp and easy to understand. I hadn't even realized I had been straining to hear, but now I know that I have been. Wow! I wish I'd pressed for a second hearing aid so much sooner!!!! It's already made an incredible difference. I can hardly believe it!

I'm having mixed emotions since getting the second aid. I'm mourning the loss of normal hearing, but only a bit, nothing like I did the first time around! For the most part, the improvement in my hearing is way too amazing for me to dwell on "what I've lost". So I'm trying to focus instead on what I've gained, which is a lot. Right now, I can hear really well with two HAs. And I love, love, LOVE being able to stream music directly to both HAs!!! I tried doing that before with one aid but it wasn't that useful. With two aids, it's amazing, and so much fun!!! Plus, using my cell phone hands-free while driving is so much cooler with my hearing aids than it ever was with a headset. I'm so glad I did this!!! Plus, my husband's a tech guy, so he's thrilled with all the fun things I can do with my HAs now. He's almost more excited than I am

I'm just putting my story out there for anyone who's had/having reservations about getting hearing aids for any reason. Esthetically, few people notice. Truly. I've worn my hair in a high ponytail with the backs of both ears very visible (I wear RITE aids) since I got my second HA, and if anyone's noticed, they certainly haven't treated me any differently. I'm also an older mom to young kids. I thought two hearing aids would make me look older, but HAs are so discreet now that I don't think anyone has noticed, and if they have, they certainly haven't said anything. I kind of feel like I want people to see them now because I feel good wearing them and I know they're helping. I really wish I'd done this sooner.

Having two hearing aids really does balance out the sound and makes a huge difference in the quality of what you hear. I'm always amazed by the reluctance of people to wear HA unless they're discreet. Nobody notices really and no one cares. But they do notice when you're enjoying the moment and able to socialize in ways you couldn't before. I'm glad to hear that you're having such a positive experience with your second HA.

Laura

Laura;

Thanks for your reply!

I was told that because my hearing loss in my good ear was slight-to-mild, a hearing aid would essentially do nothing. It's not that I didn't *want* a second hearing aid (although I didn't at first!). But when I finally did *want* it, I was told it would be of little to no benefit to me. If I hadn't pushed so hard for it, I wouldn't have tried it because my audi seriously thought it wouldn't help. My audi's also a bilateral hearing aid user herself, so if anyone's going to recommend bilateral hearing aids, it would be her! She just really felt they wouldn't do much in my particular case. As it turns out, she was wrong.

I don't know that people's desires for discreet hearing aids are any different than people's desires for discreet eye devices. What do you think? I know many people who refuse to wear glasses and will only wear contact lenses due to vanity issues. In my opinion, that's no different than choosing to wear discreet or invisible hearing aids. I do see your point, though. It shouldn't matter whether a HA is visible or not. I've never cared if a person wears glasses, hearing aids, both, or neither. I've also never cared if a person uses a cane, wheelchair, or any other device. But we all know people who DO care about appearances above all else.

LOL KerBear, if HAs made you look old I'd NEVER get carded!

Interesting, I have EVA too. I lost my hearing in my right ear around 3 years old due to an accident. Then lost a lot of my hearing in my left at 28 yrs old (33 now) and started wearing a hearing aid then.

Does your hearing fluctuate? I've met one other person on here that has it as well, very similar story with losing hearing in their late 20s too with normal hearing prior.

I use to wear 2 hearing aids until I was in a bad car accident in 95 . I got hit on the right side by something in my car , it was on my forehead . This some how messed my ear up and I can no longer wear a HA in my right ear and I really notice this in my balance and talking to people or watching TV. That is great you got your second HA and it's helping you .

Hi KerBear, Glad to hear that your new HA's been helping you a lot. What's the name of the HA model that allows you to stream music and mobile phone directly?

sappstter said:

Interesting, I have EVA too. I lost my hearing in my right ear around 3 years old due to an accident. Then lost a lot of my hearing in my left at 28 yrs old (33 now) and started wearing a hearing aid then.

Does your hearing fluctuate? I've met one other person on here that has it as well, very similar story with losing hearing in their late 20s too with normal hearing prior.

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Sappstter;
Do you have EVA in both ears? I only have it in one ear, my right, confirmed by both an MRI and a CT scan. According to my ENT, with the number of significant head injuries I've had in my life I "should be deaf" in my right ear. But I'm not.

We have no idea what's going on with my left ear. An MRI, CT, and bloodwork all show nothing unusual, but I'm still losing hearing for some reason. There's no known family history of hearing loss other than presbycusis after age 65.... I guess I'm just lucky

Does my hearing fluctuate? Yes, it does, but NOT in the ear with EVA. The hearing in my EVA ear has been very consistent since I first had my hearing checked 2 years ago. If anything, it's improved very slightly. The hearing in my other ear fluctuates by 10-20 dB, which essentially means the hearing in my good ear ranges from the low end of normal on a good day to a moderate loss on a bad day. (Thank goodness for volume control!) My ENT says that much fluctuation is impossible, but I finally have 2 audiograms from a week apart that confirm this fluctuation, although both were done in different offices by different audis. Still, according to both audis, one could expect a variation of 5, "maybe 10" dB between offices, but a 20 dB difference seems indicative that something else is going on. And I didn't have a cold or allergies during either hearing test. I don't have symptoms of Meniere's, so who knows?! Time will tell...maybe.

Does your hearing fluctuate? And do you have any vertigo? Supposedly vertigo goes hand in hand with EVA, but I don't have any to speak of yet. *Fingers crossed*

Googoosh said:

Hi KerBear, Glad to hear that your new HA's been helping you a lot. What's the name of the HA model that allows you to stream music and mobile phone directly?

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I didn't word that right because I can't stream "directly" from my HAs to my phone. I'm sorry if I misled you. I have to use a streamer in order to hear my phone, iPod, etc. in my HAs. However, the sound is so amazing that I really don't mind using the streamer.

You got a hearing aid for slight-to-mild loss? How is your HA not over amplifying noises?

I only wear the HA for my left ear which has a slightly bigger loss that yours and I am only in the mild range with that ear. I had to get so many channels canceled just to comfortably wear the aid during work and school. Other than that, I don't. It feels too loud in different settings, even after going for five adjustments in the last year.

I guess though with me having moderate loss in the other ear...maybe I guess my dependency on using one aid may get me to wear the other more. However, you and I also have totally different hearing losses as well.

That is interesting to know though. My audiologist won't get out hearing aids unless you have a minimum 25 decibels within at least one frequency (or all). I guess his policy may be on case by case basis too.

Good to see the other adults with EVA that haven't lost all their hearing! I was diagnosed with EVA in both ears a few years ago (around age 33yrs). I lost all usable hearing in my right ear sometime when I was a child, and had mild/moderate loss in my good ear which remained stable for the most part.

-Mike

KikLove said:

You got a hearing aid for slight-to-mild loss? How is your HA not over amplifying noises?

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Yes, I got a hearing aid for slight-to-mild-loss. My hearing in my left (good) ear ranges from 20-35 dB, with the speech frequencies being between 30 and 35 dB, so for me, a hearing aid works and doesn't seem to be over amplifying other noises. I have a really, really good audiologist who knows what she's doing. Believe me, though, my audi didn't want to give me a second aid. I'd been asking to try a second aid for over a year, and as I mentioned in my initial post, she really didn't think it would benefit me. But it is providing a great deal of benefit! Everything sounds so much crisper with it in.

I also have a suspicion that for most of my adult life, my hearing in my good ear was in the "excellent" range, so with what I perceive to be a relatively new drop in the hearing in my good ear, it makes sense that I'm sensitive to the reduction in volume and clarity. I'm generally a person who's very sensitive to slight change. If my eyeglass prescription changes even by 0.1 diopter, I notice! My optometrist often teases me about it. Perhaps I'm the same way with my hearing?!

Michael2013 said:

Good to see the other adults with EVA that haven't lost all their hearing! I was diagnosed with EVA in both ears a few years ago (around age 33yrs). I lost all usable hearing in my right ear sometime when I was a child, and had mild/moderate loss in my good ear which remained stable for the most part.

-Mike

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Hi Mike;

Nope, I haven't lost all of my hearing! I guess I'm one of the "lucky" ones. EVA was only diagnosed in March via MRI, and it is only present on the one side, so who knows what happened there? My ENT says there are two current thoughts on EVA. The first is that it's a growth disorder during early childhood. The second is that it can be caused by trauma. He speculates that my case may be adult-onset caused by one of my many cycling accidents. There's no way to know for sure since I've never had an MRI of my head until this February. I have had a slight hearing loss in my EVA ear, low-frequency only, since childhood, but have no idea when it progressed to a flat-ish moderate hearing loss. If I had to guess, I would say it occurred in the last few years, but there's no way to know for sure since my last hearing test (prior to 2 years ago) was when I was 20, and I'm now 42!

When I asked my ENT about the future hearing of that ear, he said "You will eventually go deaf." However, my audiologist, who has been practicing for 18 years, said she's seen a few cases of adults 20-30 years my senior whose losses haven't progressed past moderate or moderately-severe. Time will tell. In the meantime, my ENT said to protect my head and don't do anything risky. I'm not a crazy risk-taker, but I do like cycling, particularly road racing, and I've bailed while doing that more than once. I'm going to keep doing it. I guess if I lose the rest of my hearing in my EVA ear while doing something fun, so be it. My husband and I have decided that I'm not going to go overboard with restrictions trying to protect that one ear. I'll wear helmets during sports for which helmets are used. Otherwise, I'll use common sense.

I really believe the hearing in that ear has deteriorated due to air travel. I've never had well-functioning eustachian tubes, but in the last 10 years, every single time I fly, I go mostly deaf - as in, can't hear spoken language at all and can just hear the rumble of the plane - when landing and the deafness lasts for 2-7 days. I use decongestants religiously for 2 days prior to flying, and take one tablet every 1-2 hours while flying. I also chew gum, drink beverages while I fly, etc., and nothing has ever helped. This has been the case for the last 10 years, and it seems to be getting progressively worse with increasingly longer periods of significant hearing impairment after I fly. So it wouldn't surprise me at all if my hearing in my EVA ear becomes severe or profound as a result of flying.

At this point, I'm thankful to have decent hearing in my good ear. My ENT says it's normal, but it's actually low normal and falls mostly into the mild hearing loss category. Either way, I realize what a blessing it is to have only one ear with EVA! I love hearing the birds and wind easily now. That may change one day, but for now, I can hear with hearing aids, and I intend to enjoy that as much as I can.

As an aside to this thread, I'm going to be trialing the Oticon Alta 2s starting in a few weeks. Apparently they have a rear-facing microphone which I think will be amazing in the car! I have two quiet-speaking young children, so car trips are often a bit of a disaster. I have a lower end vehicle, so the vehicle noise alone is ridiculous. Their voices on top of the vehicle noise are close to inaudible most of the time. They get frustrated having to shout at me. I don't blame them I'm hoping the Alta 2s will be a bit of an improvement.http://www.alldeaf.com//www.pinterest.com/pin/create/extension/

I picked up my Oticon Alta 2s today. (They're NOT the Pro version, just the regular version.) So far, so good. As of my last adjustment about 2 months ago, my old HAs were pretty much perfect, so my AudD basically just transferred the settings from my old ones to my new ones. I can't say the overall sound is any different than it was with my previous HAs, but I can say that with my current program, my hearing sounds totally "normal" to me. It's not tinny or electronic sounding. My husband's voice sounds exactly like what I remember it sounding like before I developed a hearing loss in my good ear.

I forgot to bring my streamer to the appointment, so driving home with both kids in the car I was unable to evaluate how well the rear-facing microphones work, since they only work in conjunction with my iPhone and the streamer. Hopefully I'll get a chance to try that out tomorrow. I can say, however, that even without a rear-direction focus, I can currently hear both kids while driving. Not only are they audible (!!), but their voices are clear, even the voice of my 3-year-old son, who's recently decided that speaking as quietly as he can is the best way to stay out of trouble! He's mad that I can now hear him whispering from across the room. I, on the other hand, am thrilled!