Losing your hearing slowly cuts you off from the people around you, and the world in general. You can’t hear what others are saying, eating out in busy restaurants is a nightmare for conversation, the birdsong stops, the phone doesn’t seem to work, everything becomes more and more silent, and so do you.
So, when you are on the road to being able to get your hearing back with a hearing aid, you can get very excited. But what can you really expect? Let’s take a look at what may be in store for you with your new hearing aids from us at the Physicians Hearing Centre in East Tennessee.
Manage your expectations
First and foremost, it’s important to remember that a hearing is an aid, not a replacer. It can never restore your hearing to its full range, but it can augment what hearing you have left.
Your hearing loss is your hearing loss
Getting used to your hearing aids is not a race. You have your own unique pattern of hearing loss and adjusting to your new hearing aid takes time.
Practice makes perfect
How good were you at tying your shoe laces the first few times you did it as a kid? Pretty rubbish probably. But practice make it second-nature and so it will be with inserting your hearing aid. It will take ages to get it right for the first good few times, but as you get more skilled, you will take less time to put it in just right. Patience and perseverance are key.
Take your time
Build up your hearing aid use slowly over time. It’s weird having something in your ear and you need to allow your body time to get used to it. And it need time too to get used to hearing again. Everything will seem extremely loud to start with. You don’t need to be spend all day being bombarded when you have been used to muffled sound or silence. Take it easy, don’t traumatize your senses by going to a rock concert on your first weekend.
Tuning in
You may have forgotten how to tune into what you want to hear if it has been a good few years since you were hearing. This is a skill you may need to relearn: tuning out the background noise, tuning into what you want to hear.
Ask for help
At Physicians Hearing Care, we don’t just turn you loose once we’ve fitted your hearing aids. We help you adjust to life in the noisy lane again with our patient support service. Need some help with getting the aid to stay in? Want some help in keeping it charged up and new batteries? Wondering if you can actually cope with all that sound? We can support you until you are good at being a hearing aid wearer if you bought your hearing aid from us.
