Am I expecting too much from my hearing aids?

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thesynthfreq

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Hi, :) My name is Danielle and I wear 2 purple Phonak Naida V UPs. I love my hearing aids and i can hear a lot with them. These past few days though have been rough. I seem to not be hearing as well and understanding speech is starting to be a real frustration for me again. I have never in my life been able to hear the sounds "s", "sh', "ch", or tell the difference between "k" and "t", "e" "c" and so on. So, when I first got my Naidas, I started hearing the "sh" sound a little and the "s" sound just sounded like an extra static sound on the ends of words. Anyway, my family is getting frustrated with me lately since I seem to be going backwards in my hearing. I dont know whats up. An example, my friend said the word "warm" but I heard "worm" and she laughed at me. I cant tell the difference between "yes" and "no" and "over" and "under" and I am answering questions wrong way more than usual, thinking I heard one thing and not the other. If someone says the alphabet out loud, B,C,D,E,G,P,V,Z,T, all sound the same, almost no difference. A, U, I ,Y, O, , are easier. M and N sound the same as well as "F" and "S", no difference. I keep trying to listen closely and its not working lately. I am visually impaired so sometimes people are too far away (more than 2 ft away is too far) and I cant speech read them. I feel like when I was younger when I had to "let things go" and just accept that whatever was said will be a mystery and I will never know what it was.
I feel like maybe I am expecting too much from my hearing aids and my hearing right now.
Since my hearing aids are Naidas, could this all just be a filter issue? I have had my hearing aids for a year now, my tubes and ear molds need to be changed and the filters over the microphones need to be changed as well. Could this be the problem? I am also being told that I am talking too loud again. Frustrating.
 
Since my hearing aids are Naidas, could this all just be a filter issue? I have had my hearing aids for a year now, my tubes and ear molds need to be changed and the filters over the microphones need to be changed as well. Could this be the problem?
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Yes, you should get the filters, tubes, and molds checked/replaced. I've heard some people replace their filters every 3 months or so. And depending on the type of material used for the molds, they may need to be replaced every 9-12 months. Any of these can affect the quality of the sound you're receiving.
 
You should go to your audiology and have your hearing aids checked out and see if your hearing have changed.

I was about to ask you if you are lipreading because it help, then I realize you can't see very well. it is hard to rely on hearing aids alone. Be your own self advocate and ask people to come closer because you can lipread better. there are sign language method that will help you, you will have to ask other people who are blind or low vision about those sign languages.
 
You may need to get your hearing checked again or get an adjustment on your ha's...the naidas are known to need adjustments every so often..
 
Are these sounds you've never heard, or you heard them and then lost them? The latter would be a filter or ajustment issue while the former would be a "your hearing loss is too severe and can not be served by hearing aids to hear these sounds" issue. :)
 
Hi. :)
The sounds that I mentioned are sounds that I have never heard very well or at all. The higher frequencies have always been silent to me until I got my Phonak hearing aids. I can hear things like coins, and other metal objects if I hold them near my hearing aids. I think that I am now able to hear these 'new sounds" because the Naida hearing aids are actually high enough power to help me in those frequencies, which is nice. I am still surprised to hear those kinds of things. I noticed today, that I kept hearing a repetitive beeping sound and was told that its birds. lol So for some reason my brain is still not understanding a bird from an electronic sound I guess. lol Other new sounds I can hear is rain. I can only hear the really, really loud kind of rain, but if it is raining lightly or misting, then I cant tell its raining until I go outside. lol
Anyway I am thinking that it might be the filters in my hearing aids since its been a year already since I got them and my speech comprehension with my hearing aids seem to have become worse over night. I also have some strange things happen to my left ear. Over an 8 month time, 2 years ago, I started noticing that I could not hear my voice at all with my hearing aids on and turned up. I went to the audiologist and ENT and they said that my ear drum fell apart without my knowing, and there is no pressure in my ear like a normal ear would have. He said that he saw something that could be bad news, and told me to come back later. That last visit freaked me out and I never went back to see him. I talked to my new audiologist about this strange issue with my ear, he said that a hearing aid might not even help it at all. I can feel more from my hearing aid than I can hear from it in that ear. Anyway, I know that the Naidas help with sounds like "sh" and "s" and so far I can only hear the "s" sound about 80% of the time, but the others like, "ch" "th' "t" "p" and "st" are iffy. Like, I cant tell the difference between the words "say" and "stay" or "key" and "tea" things like that. My friend who has a profound hearing loss, much worse than mine, hears the difference between more words than I can, so I am trying to figure out if its my hearing aid filters or what. I am really thinking its the filters that need adjusting. Right now my hearing aids are set to what the computer set it to when I first got them.
Thanks for the info.
:) TSF
 
Hi. :)
Yes, I can use speech reading if someone is less than 3ft away. I also use sign language (PSE) and some ASL when I am in a noisy environment or when I turn my hearing aids off. If I am in a poorly lit environment then I use tactile sign language or a Braille computer (Braille Note Mpower).
I am thinking that my recent issues might be from the filters in my hearing aids, that have never been changed in the year that I have had them.
I am going to call my audiologist about getting them replaced and see if that helps.

:) TSF
 
I went to the audiologist and ENT and they said that my ear drum fell apart without my knowing, and there is no pressure in my ear like a normal ear would have. He said that he saw something that could be bad news, and told me to come back later.
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The ear drum can be replaced with your own cartilage. My daughter had that done last year. She has mild hearing loss in that ear now because the cartilage is thicker than an ear drum and doesn't "give" as much. She goes back in Oct to have her hearing tested again. She had had the surgery a few years ago using just skin from behind her ear (which would be the same thickness, or thinner, than an ear drum), but it didn't "take" and disintegrated, hence the use of cartilage this time around.
The "bad news" could be the 3 tiny bones. Again, they can be replaced with prosthetic bones.
If I were you, I’d seen an ENT again and find out what can be done.
 
Why do people who know you have a hearing problem, find it hilarious when you don't hear something?
 
Hask12 said:
Why do people who know you have a hearing problem, find it hilarious when you don't hear something?
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Yeah, that is true. I always get the "I SAID!!...." all the time if I dont understand something that is said. My friend likes to yell even louder if I dont understand her. She knows sign and we use PSE all the time, very fluently but I try to hear/understand speech first then, if I can't, then we sign what we are saying.
Other times I just turn my hearing aids off or take them out and sign only, since every time I try to talk, I am always talking way too loud.
Then I also get the "..deaf freak!" comment every single time I do not understand what was said or if I didnt hear something. She uses that word in a silly, joking way but sometimes it gets old. lol
Anyway, my friend will get frustrated with me if I dont understand a word or even a whole sentence and she will yell it even louder which just doesnt help and it ends up making everything more distorted and I just have to accept that I will never know what was said at the moment.

Let me tell ya, its weird to live with a hearing person. My sister (my twin who is also hearing impaired and wears same hearing aids as me) have had to adjust to being careful how loud things are and how loud we talk. When we work on music in our studio, we have everything loud, but sometimes its too loud for her. Poor hearing person. lol

:) TSF
 
HHIssues said:
Hi,

What's your hearing loss range? Profound? Severe, Mild, Moderate, etc?
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Hi, my hearing loss is sensory neural with some conductive issues too.
I was born 3 months early, died 3 times and was given meds that were toxic to my hearing, central nervous system and vision. I was supposed to have hearing aids at 4 years old for a moderate hearing loss but that never happened. I have had ear infections,plaque and holes in my ear drums all my life. I started wearing hearing aids at 13 (i had a 50/60db loss back then). I had speech therapy in kindergarten through 2nd grade) and hated it, but I have decent speech even though I have some "deaf words" as my friend says. lol

My hearing loss ranges from 80db to 110+db (250hz to 8000Khz). I dont know how to get an image of my audio-gram on here, but that is the basics of it.

The audiologist told me that my left ear would not get much help from a hearing aid. With a hearing aid on, I can feel sounds more than hear it in my left ear. My right ear does all the hearing.

I have the Phonak Icom that I use to hear music on the TV and music in the studio as well. When I play the synthesizer, I only hear the middle range of keys, the lower notes can be felt and the mid-high range of notes sound
very badly out of tune and the higher notes are silent even with the Icom.
 
Ok, cause if you do at least have a profound hearing loss, there'll probably be a limit on how much an hearing aid could help you. However, from what I've gathered, you do have a little better hearing in your right ear.
 
I know for you it's been getting worse so it is a good idea to see the audiologist. But I just happened to read through your post and wanted to mention about expectation.

As a hearing person with no recorded issues with hearing I have a lot of the same troubles when people say letters like S and F and M and N they sound very the same, as well as B and P etc. I work in a call centre and often have to grill people 'is that like bravo or papa?', 'No it's N like November!' - some people get very angry if you can't understand what they mean even though most people have this problem over the phone and even in person. A lot of the customers i have to spell words phonetically to because letters sound the same. In person as well I often hear things wrong or take a while to work out the sounds I've heard into words that make sense in a sentence. My boyfriend often mishears me as well or mishears the TV like today he thought 'words' was 'wits'. Basically, sound is a bit vague anyway especially with different accents and speeds and all of that. So don't expect to hear everything, even hearing people don't hear everything. And say to your friends in your most sarcastic patronising voice 'Ooooh, didn't you KNOW that I'm partially Deaf? I suppose the hearing aids aren't TOO obvious, are they?' maybe they'll be at least mildly considerate then.
 
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