Spring is Springing!

I took a walk in our back yard with my husband yesterday and realized that my hearing devices allow me to hear the sounds of nature that I would not hear otherwise. It was wonderful. I even heard the little creek burbling.  And birds !  So many birds.  And it made me wonder….why doesn’t EVERYONE want to hear those sounds”

I think about a few people I know (who will remain unnamed) who choose not to wear their hearing aids because “everything is too loud”, or “I hear just fine without them”, or “I only wear them when I need them”, or “they don’t work very well, things don’t sound right”. Of course, all of these reasons have solutions. But you have to want to be engaged in the world around you in order to resolve those excuses.

“Everything is too loud”. Well, when you first get hearing aids, you are hearing sounds you have not heard for some time, so yes, it may seem loud. But it is only by wearing them every day that you normalize the sounds. “I hear just fine without them”. Well, that’s pretty unlikely, and would probably not be substantiated by your friends, partners, family. “I only wear them when I need them”.  f your hearing tests show that you have hearing loss that would benefit from hearing aids, then you “need” them all of the time.“They don’t work very well, things don’t sound right”. Well, it can be true in some situations, that things sound a bit different than the “normal” you remember from before you wore the devices. But you brain is an amazing organ, capable of adapting to astonishing changes, even to the point of making them sound normal again.

All of this boils down to these two points:

1. 1. If you have been tested by an audiologist and it is determined that you have diminished hearing and would benefit from hearing aids, then wearing them during all of your waking hours will give you the most benefit.
   2. Your audiologist is there for you to help you adapt. Adjustments can be made that can address volume issues, or sounds that you are missing, or any other issues you have with them. They want you to get maximum value from them, so remembering that you and your audiologist are partners in this journey is a good thing.

Spring is springing!!  Time to head outside and hear the birds.