Hearing aids each configured to the wrong ear and hearing loss?

[1monkeymissing]

Hi Everyone!

This is my first post and it's good to be here!

I have stumbled across this forum in a bit of an emotional state as I feel quite helpless and uninformed, and a bit isolated at the moment. Nobody around me has hearing impairments and sometimes it just feels like they can't really relate.

I am 26, living in the UK, hearing impaired in both ears and they think that I have been hearing impaired since my mother noticed me struggling when I was three years old. At first this was dismissed by my GP, but my school eventually had my hearing tested and impairment confirmed when I was seven years old. I grew up being told that one ear has moderate loss the other moderate, bordering on severe. If I put my hand over one ear everything sounds under water and I can't understand what anyone is saying. If I put my hand on the other ear, everything sounds clearer, but tinny. I also have tinnitus.

I'm currently wearing phonak hearing aids, ones with with moulds. However, I'm having a bit of a distressing time as I found out on Friday that my suspicions were confirmed... since March I've been wearing hearing aids each configured to the wrong ear! I raised this at the time but they insisted that the computer was saying otherwise. I was struggling to get on with them, and so recently went back for a re-test and I'm now trying to get used to these new ones which are now configured the right way around, despite this now feeling quite unnatural and my anxiety level feels quite high for all the new sound I am trying to get used to again.

I also found that I have lost more hearing since March, which is now my second drop in hearing this year. Until now, my hearing loss has been stable. I'm waiting for a referral back to the Consultant which will take a few weeks, but I am feeling very confused and upset as I don't feel like I know very much about my hearing impairments at all. Basically last time I saw the Consultant it was concluded that no one knows what caused my hearing loss in the first place, it could be a genetic thing where I gradually go deaf over time but as this didn't happen in childhood that is unlikely. She said it's common that no one knows what causes the loss, no one knows why I have lost hearing recently which is also common, nor will anyone be able to tell me if I am going to lose more hearing - but that since it is in the inner ear the loss is permanent (so the reason why doesn't matter anyway?).

I left feeling quite helpless but told myself that it may be the cold I was suffering with at the time, or if it is permanent loss maybe it won't continue. Now I have lost more hearing I am beginning to feel alarmed.

My question is... Is it possible that I could have lost hearing, permanently or otherwise, due to wearing the hearing aids configured to the wrong ears? My brain did some wonky re-wiring? It sounds like a silly question and I'm sorry if it is. But does anybody have any experience or knowledge about this? I guess I'm struggling to come to terms with all the uncertainty and am searching for information and any possible answers.

Sorry for the long post and thank you for reading !

 

[sallylou]

Probably not. It sounds like you have progressive hearing loss. Me, too. Welcome to the club.

Seriously, read posts and this forum and you'll find people who understand what you're going through. Is there a deaf/hoh community where you live that you can connect with? Being isolated is bad.

Welcome to AD! I hope that you enjoy our quirky community.

 

[1monkeymissing]

Hi Sallylou thank you for the welcome !

Yeah I had a feeling someone might say that... The reality of the possibility of this is just dawning on me I think. Weird, it kind of feels like being a 'hearing person' finding out they might end up deaf, despite the fact that for as long as I remember I've been hard of hearing. Like full hearies, I took what I have for granted!

Am finding reading around very helpful. I've never been in contact with others who are hoh or deaf! I feel better already. I don't know of any deaf community locally, but will look into this.

Thanks again!

 

[Buffalo]

Did you switched the hearing aids to see what happened?

 

[1monkeymissing]

Hi Buffalo, no I couldn't because they were two different types of hearing aids (or at least I didn't think I could). I had one with an ear mould and the other which is a discreet looking aid with very thin tubes and a little nob that is inserted into the ear canal. Sorry I'm not very clued up on the technology. But my understanding was that I couldn't have a second aid like that one as my hearing loss is too severe in the other ear for that technology to accomodate it - so I went with one mould and one like that instead. If they were both moulds I'd have just switched the moulds over.

But, stupidly, they were initially so insistent that I was wrong (that's now changed), that I just thought that perhaps I was wrong, perhaps it was the audiologist in the past who got it wrong and told me wrong, or whatever.

The aids were linked so I couldn't turn one up and the other down, which I wanted to do, so I ended up having them both down very low as the right ear was much louder than I expected, but felt I was getting no sound input in one the other ear.

With the new aids in, with my ears the right way around, I feel more 'balanced' in terms of the sound input. Not cocking my head to one side to try to get more sound in one ear etc. although the specifics of the sounds now sounds unnatural as I'm not used to it, and I'm having to re-learn how far away everything really is etc. But that will come in time. And if I want to I can turn the volume's up or down separately this time!

 

[VamPyroX]

Did you label your hearing aids so that they're easier to identify in case you lose the ear molds?

When I got my new digital hearing aid, the box came with 2 extra little panels. The hearing aid already had a beige panel that you lift to connect to the computer for testing and modification. That panel can be replaced with another panel of the same kind. Well, the 2 extra little panels I had were red and blue. The audiologist explained that it wouldn't matter for me if I used them since I only wear one hearing aid, but if I were to wear two hearing aids... then the RED is recommended for the right and BLUE is recommended for the left. RED begins with R. Right begins with R. BLUE? Who cares! Once you know what's right, then what's left... self explanatory.

 

[LoveBlue]

Did you label your hearing aids so that they're easier to identify in case you lose the ear molds?

When I got my new digital hearing aid, the box came with 2 extra little panels. The hearing aid already had a beige panel that you lift to connect to the computer for testing and modification. That panel can be replaced with another panel of the same kind. Well, the 2 extra little panels I had were red and blue. The audiologist explained that it wouldn't matter for me if I used them since I only wear one hearing aid, but if I were to wear two hearing aids... then the RED is recommended for the right and BLUE is recommended for the left. RED begins with R. Right begins with R. BLUE? Who cares! Once you know what's right, then what's left... self explanatory.

I do the Red/Right begin with R and Blue/Left are each 4 letters.

 

[1monkeymissing]

Hi VamPyroX... Yes, I did. I wore the hearing aids the right way around (or so I thought), that wasn't the problem LOL! The problem was that (which has now been confirmed) they originally got my ears the wrong way around when they did the hearing test. So they thought my bad ear was the opposite ear, as it showed up on the screen, because they entered it wrong in the first place. This meant that the hearing aids they fitted me with were two different aids with different sized tubes and everything, and the one that goes in my better ear ended up being fitted into my bad ear, which I know the technology can't accommodate for the amount of hearing loss I have. But they insisted that was right, as that was what their computer said. But they've since admitted that they got their left from their right the wrong way around, and therefore I wasn;t getting on with the aids because they weren't configured to the right ears! Duh, I did say that the minute they put them in but they insisted I was misunderstood.

They now say the first test shows up as being the wrong way around, results for the right ear showed up as being the left ear and vice versa. They say this has messed up being able to tell me anything from the one or two tests they did afterwards! Therefore, the tests are invalid and they can't say if I'm losing hearing, or not, or at what rate based on the previous tests over the past year. Although I feel more deaf so that's enough for me, but still. I'd have liked to know how much over the year and how much overall.

The previous notes from my old audiologist that I had got to them a few months ago, they tell me they have lost. So they can't use those to compare the last test with because they don't have them. So I had another wasted journey with no information. Now I am having to apply (and pay), again, to get my old notes (which is their job) - in time to see the Consultant, in order to have a clue at what's going on. BY then, it will have taken a whole year just to clarify if I've lost hearing, and how much!

What silly mistakes! But at least, eventually, I might get there!