Do you feel lucky to have gotten your hearing aid while very young?

faire_jour said:
The idea that wearing hearing aids will make your hearing get worse.
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It can happen if the hearing aids are not properly calibrated. The best way to avoid that is to see an audiologist with a good reputation. It won't be a problem as long the hearing aids are properly fitted and maintained. Especially when they are prescribed to your needs, which is something every audiologist should be able to do.

It's only perceived as a myth because it is a rare occurrence.
 
Banjo said:
It can happen if the hearing aids are not properly calibrated. The best way to avoid that is to see an audiologist with a good reputation. It won't be a problem as long the hearing aids are properly fitted and maintained. Especially when they are prescribed to your needs, which is something every audiologist should be able to do.

It's only perceived as a myth because it is a rare occurrence.
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That's why I prefaced it by saying: properly fitted hearing aids.
 
faire_jour said:
That's why I prefaced it by saying: properly fitted hearing aids.
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Perhaps but that may had not been the case for one of the posters above. Back then, the standards of audiology wasn't really anything to be impressed with in some places. The bottom line is, you acted quickly to point it out as a myth.

It's only a myth if the hearing aid is properly fitted and maintained, but then that's an oxymoron.
 
Banjo said:
Perhaps but that may had not been the case for one of the posters above. Back then, the standards of audiology wasn't really anything to be impressed with in some places. The bottom line is, you acted quickly to point it out as a myth.

It's only a myth if the hearing aid is properly fitted and maintained, but then that's an oxymoron.
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I agree with you about the "standards of audiology"; in fact, I think it still persists today. Most of these people deal with elder hearing people whose hearing is beginning to go south. A deaf person from birth or shortly after that is a horse of another color.
 
Tousi said:
I agree with you about the "standards of audiology"; in fact, I think it still persists today. Most of these people deal with elder hearing people whose hearing is beginning to go south. A deaf person from birth or shortly after that is a horse of another color.
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And that is why parent should (and I believe most do) go to a pediatric audiologist. Once a parent is informed about the child's loss, they are told who to see, and generally, they have to go to a children's hospital or a big city to see the audiologist. I don't know any parent who discovers their child has a hearing loss and then goes to "Miracle Ear" and tries to buy a hearing aid.
 
faire_jour said:
And that is why parent should (and I believe most do) go to a pediatric audiologist. Once a parent is informed about the child's loss, they are told who to see, and generally, they have to go to a children's hospital or a big city to see the audiologist. I don't know any parent who discovers their child has a hearing loss and then goes to "Miracle Ear" and tries to buy a hearing aid.
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Thanks. IF the parents do anything, I hope this is where they go.
 
FJ, you're speaking from a position of privilege. Unfortunately, there are children whose parents cannot afford a pediatric specialist. I'm sure that some of them are in my urban area. All of us who can afford highly qualified audiologists are privileged (myself included).
 
Lucky- I'm on the fence. I first got hearing aids when I was 6; no-one noticed any serious problems with my hearing until then, just after I'd started school. I had over-the-ear headphones (don't know the term), with the circular spongy discs on, like the old walkmans, with a radio aid. All I remember about it is that everyone used to make fun of me!

When I was 7 or 8 I then got ITE hearing aids. I have a mild/moderate sensorineural loss and my hearing is relatively 'normal' for hearing speech. The other kids in the unit at school had severe/profound loss so I was always seen as the one with the 'best' hearing. They were analogue, and amplified everything uncomfortably, and things were still distorted, so I hated wearing them and tried not to as much as possible.

By the time I was 16 and I left school and went to college I'd stopped wearing them for the above reasons. I managed ok through college and uni (with a notetaker but that's another post!) until I was 21 and was persuaded to get digital aids- the difference was amazing, SO much better than the analogue ones. Now I wear them most of the time (sometimes I get lazy, when they need cleaning or I'm on my own I don't feel like wearing them- they do make my ears sore/itchy after a while).

So, I didn't have good experiences of them as a young child, and that put me off wearing/trying them for years. Perhaps if I'd had better experiences things would be different. Given that I only have mild loss in the speech frequencies people say things like 'I never noticed, you sound/seem fine to me'- so I could get by (it's harder without them, but I can manage). Not until I was 20/21 did I get one that I gladly wear because I felt the sound benefits from it outweighed the negatives.
 
Actually, it IS true in some cases. My audiologist admitted to me that this was the case for me. The cillia in my cochlea erode from normal, everyday sounds as a result of a genetic mutation. Louder sounds exacerbate it. HAs amplify sounds; that is what they are designed to do. So they obviously contributed to my loss.

Fact is, I was going to lose my hearing anyway, but what I am hypothesizing is that the HAs sped up the process, not that they actually caused the loss to begin with, or created a progressive loss when none would have existed otherwise.
 
kokonut said:
Rather it's the loudness that can make your hearing worse, and not simply listening to music.
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yes, I know, and hearing aids are naturally loud. When my hearing friends wanted to try out my hearing aids, it was WAY too loud for them. I had to keep the volume to "1" so it doesn't hurt their ears. I am on volume 3 or 4.

btw, I once heard that CI is better for your ears than hearing aids because of that.
 
Lighthouse77 said:
btw, I once heard that CI is better for your ears than hearing aids because of that.
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No, because the biggest issue with CI is music because it does not capture all of the pitch information. My hearing aid does that. It capture all of it only because my ear still retain the ability to perceive pitch and timing through natural amplication that hits all of my working cilia. But it doesn't work well for CI.


Hearing Health Magazine
 
kokonut said:
No, because the biggest issue with CI is music because it does not capture all of the pitch information. My hearing aid does that. It capture all of it only because my ear still retain the ability to perceive pitch and timing through natural amplication that hits all of my working cilia. But it doesn't work well for CI.


Hearing Health Magazine
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Hearing aids do not capture all pitches either. That work from 250 hz to around 4000 hz. Normal hearing is from 20 to 20,000 hz.
 
whatdidyousay! said:
I wish I had gotten my HA at younger age than 7 Years old! It would had kept my dad my getting from so mad at me , I could not hear him when he called me and he would hit me! I was not allowed to play with some kids in my neighborhood as their parents thought I was crazy and would harm their kids! My speech was really bad and I talked very loud as I could not hear myself ! A HA would had made my life a lot nicer!
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That's what my mother tells me she did with me. Even though her mother was hoh and she was also, it never occurred to her that I might be deaf. She said that by the time she took me to audiologist at age 4/5, he told her that I could have a big chip on my shoulder from the punishments I was given for not hearing.

I had those horrible old hearing aid boxes that sat in your pocket with a cord attached. In a classroom all it picked up was the background noises and an awful speech quality. As I am from New Zealand and from a city that had a School for the Deaf, I was immediately taken on by them. They came to the school and gave me speech therapy and the hearing tests and aids. You didn't have to have money to get help in my country.

When my daughter needed hearing aids it was the same school for the deaf that we went to for hearing aids etc. She didn't need speech therapy like I did though because her hearing loss was smaller. I chose for her to have hearing aids though (CIC) as I knew that she needed all the help she could get and that hearing aids were far more superior than in my day.
 
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