Back in May 2017 \u00a0I mentioned (Blog End of the Line) that I got new hearing aids. \u00a0WA thought some snazzy new Phonaks with all the bells and whistles would be very helpful to me, so I got them and all the cool accessories. \u00a0And thus started my decline.<\/p>\n
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Please note I am not in any way knocking Phonaks. \u00a0I’ve benefited from them in my early years of hearing loss and many people I know are doing wonderfully with them. \u00a0The problem is, I just don’t have enough hearing to make use of their terrific technology. \u00a0It’s brilliant, I have no doubt, but unfortunately, due to many different circumstances, including months of trying to adjust them, we just couldn’t make them work for me. \u00a0 Phonak was great about it and did their best, but they just weren’t right for me.<\/p>\n
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At times, I thought they sounded pretty good. \u00a0But then I realized those times were in a quiet room, one on one. \u00a0In any other situation, I was becoming helpless. \u00a0And at that point, I was starting to feel it was about to become hopeless. \u00a0I thought I finally did reach the end of the line and I felt so desperate, I started practicing ASL again – \u00a0 right up until I broke my wrist and could no longer move my right hand. \u00a0But getting back to the point – I was unable to communicate with anyone in normal life situations. \u00a0I couldn’t communicate with friends across a table in a restaurant. \u00a0I couldn’t even understand DHH when he tried to help me. \u00a0I couldn’t understand the cashier telling me how much my groceries were. \u00a0I couldn’t understand anyone. \u00a0I wasn’t getting enough sound to make sense of what I was trying to comprehend in lip (speech) reading.<\/p>\n
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I figured I had nothing to lose so back to WA I went. \u00a0I hoped she’d come up with a miracle and somehow make the Phonaks work for me. \u00a0Unfortunately, she could not, but she still came up with a miracle. \u00a0“We’re going to try other brands until we find one that works,” she said. \u00a0“We’re not done yet!”<\/p>\n
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And then she ordered a brand I hadn’t really heard much about in all my years of hearing loss. I don’t know why I never heard much about them so I was a little leery about it. \u00a0But she ordered Oticon Hearing Aids and the minute she put them in my ears, my life snapped back to how it was before. \u00a0Voices were coming out of people’s mouths again, not sounding like they were coming from a tunnel far away. \u00a0I was able to put the sounds together with the lips and start reading again. \u00a0They work very differently from the Phonaks, and lo and behold, they work for me! \u00a0Don’t get me wrong – I still can’t hear and I don’t mean to give the impression that I can. \u00a0But they bring enough sound into my ears for me to function and cope the way I did before I tried the Phonaks. \u00a0And again, I’m not knocking Phonak. \u00a0They’re great. \u00a0They just didn’t work well for me.<\/p>\n
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I’m sharing this so you’ll all know that even when it starts to feel hopeless, don’t give up hope. \u00a0There are always people working to help us, to give us products that can enrich our lives, to find more ways to give us a sense of comfort and normalcy. \u00a0In this case, Oticon is working for me. \u00a0And may we have many successful years together. Thank you from my heart Oticon!<\/p>\n
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Back in May 2017 \u00a0I mentioned (Blog End of the Line) that I got new hearing aids. \u00a0WA thought some snazzy new Phonaks with all the bells and whistles would be very helpful to me, so I got them and all the cool accessories. \u00a0And thus started my decline. Please note I am not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lostmyhearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lostmyhearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lostmyhearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lostmyhearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lostmyhearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=351"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/lostmyhearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":416,"href":"https:\/\/lostmyhearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351\/revisions\/416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lostmyhearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lostmyhearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lostmyhearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}