For some time now, I’ve been aware that my hearing was deteriorating. At first, I thought it was wax covering my eardrum, and to some extent it was. Last time (a few years ago) I had my ears micro-vacuumed, it really helped: previously I had gone up to students talking to me in tutorials in order to make out what they were saying. And again when I had my ears micro-vacuumed again recently, it did help, but my wife has been telling me for some time that I wasn’t hearing well.
I did have a simple pure tone audiogram produced a few years, ago, and it did indeed show 40dB or so lost at 4 to 8kHz, but I was not impressed by the audiologist who did the test. But now, having been impressed by the people who did the micro-vacuuming this time (Edinburgh Hearing Practice, at their Auchterarder location), I decided to go for a test with them.
This time the test was in a soundproof booth, and as well as pure tone audiometry, they tested me on isolated words presented to single ears (dichotically), and to speech presented in babble noise. This time I was impressed by the testing, and I could see from the results that my hearing had worsened, and I could see from the errors I’d made in identifying words that my loss of higher frequencies was getting in the way. I’d also noticed that I was finding it harder to make out speech in busy environments, or where there was often more than one speaker – in the common room, or in meetings, for example. It was beginning too make me stop attempting to have conversations in crowded environments
So it came as no surprise to me that my tester reckoned I should get a hearing aid. I know from my professional background that it’s worth getting an aid before one’s hearing really deteriorates too far, so I was open to his suggestions.
I went for it: two behind-the-ear (BTE) aids, with the receiver in the ear-canal (so my residual hearing should be unaffected). I’ll post again once I have them to try!
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