Well, as of six weeks ago I’d have said I was happy with my first pair of HAs, my Siemens Motion 700s. They are allegedly CICs, but stick pretty far out so I’d say they look more like ITCs. I heard pretty well, but I kept having trouble with the fit, so they got sent back a number of times, which resulted in my getting an exceptionally long trial period.
I’m approaching the end of my trial period, and one of them still doesn’t fit right (my ear, by the end of the day, feels like I have an ear infection), and all the adjustments I’ve gotten have made it HARDER to hear, particularly in noise. Plus, my audiologist is leaving and she keeps canceling appointments and I’m getting really fed up and frustrated.
So I’m thinking of returning them and starting anew with a different audiologist/office. Which is making me wonder if I should get a whole different type of HA. I got the CICs because I dance and do yoga and didn’t want to worry about them staying put. But what I’m wondering is this: I hear pretty well WITHOUT aids. The main things I have trouble with are people who lower their voices to say something private, people with naturally soft/mumbly voices (like, unfortunately, my husband), and listening to the TV. I do NOT, curiously, have a problem with voices in noisy situations. In fact, I find that at parties and other noisy situations, people lean closer and speak louder, and I can hear them as well as anyone else can.
The HAs, by and large, are not helping with the soft/mumbly voices. And they’re making other situations WORSE. It’s actually harder to hear in noisy situations. It’s not just that everything is noisier – it’s more like it’s messing with the attentional system of my brain, so that I can’t focus on just one noise out of many.
So what I’m wondering is this: would something like open fit make more sense? Would that let me use the hearing I do have, without blocking it up like a CIC? Or is there a way to wear an HA where you just have it on in some situations? I don’t really want to be putting them in and pulling them out and having to keep track of them all day long, but that’s actually how it seems I’d hear best.
I don’t much care how they look – I’ve got lots of hair. And besides, I’ve spent the past two months peering into everyone’s ears to try to find HA wearers to talk to, and despite all the concerns on this forum, it is incredibly hard to notice them, even when deliberately searching.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
My audiogram:
250 R30 L35
500 R30 L45
1K R45 L45
2K R50 L50
3K R45 L45
4K R35 L35
6K R20 L25
8K R15 L20