Stephanie Booth – Page 5 – Open Ears Archive

When Do You Wear or Remove Your Hearing Aids?

As somebody with mild/medium hearing loss, I guess wearing hearing aids are more of a choice than a necessity for me. I mean, I functioned without them for nearly 40 years. Today I wouldn’t give them up for anything in the world, of course, and I really prefer wearing them for anything resembling human interaction. But I can get by without. (An audiologist I had a chat with one day told me I’d be surprised at how people with much more hearing loss than me “get by just fine” without aids. Anyway.)

So, when do I wear them, when do I remove them? As a general rule, I wear them when I leave the house. (My cats aren’t all that talkative.) I remove them when I get home. Since I got my V90 aids though, I often forget to remove them when I get home.

I don’t wear my hearing aids to watch TV.

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Phonak User Research Studies in NYC and London

Yesterday Pascal sent me a link to a form that allows people to sign up to participate in the user research studies Phonak is going to be organising in London and NYC, asking me if I could pass it around amongst people I know.

Yes, behind-the-scenes scoop: this is often how you find people to participate in such studies! It’s one thing to put a form online, and another to get it to the right people. To participate in the studies you need to be a hearing aid wearer, but it doesn’t have to be Phonak. So, if you live in NYC or London (or are ready to head there), do sign up to participate.

This kind of research is essential to get real live feedback from the people who actually use hearing technology and shape the future of these products. One of the criticisms I’ve often heard about hearing aids (and that I’ve made myself) is that they don’t always seem to fulfil our actual needs as people with hearing loss. This is a chance to change this!

Pascal is particularly interested (but not only of course) in hearing from people who connect their hearing aids to their smartphone, or would like to, or tried but gave up because it wasn’t practical or useful…

D. J. Demers AKA The Hearing Aid Guy

As I was on my way out after my most recent day at the Phonak office in Stäfa, Vincent quickly showed me the beginning of D. J.’s YouTube video. It was funny! (We can hope so, he’s a stand-up comedian.)

I just finished watching the video now and have been laughing out loud in my living-room. Do watch it too if you want a laugh.

Of course, a captioned version is also available. Continue reading “D. J. Demers AKA The Hearing Aid Guy”

So Many Failed Fittings

Again and again, when I talk about my hearing loss and my role as Open Ears editor, people tell me about their relative, acquaintance, or friend who has hearing loss of some degree, got hearing aids, but never wears them. This is a well-known problem in the industry, of course. I haven’t done checking out the existing research on the topic, but after an umpteenth discussion — and a failed fitting in my history — I do have a few thoughts to share.

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About Being Confused

Over the last couple of months, I’ve been trying out a variety of hearing aids as part of my newly-found “guinea pig” position at Phonak. As a geek, I love playing with new technology and trying things out. As a person with hearing loss, I’m curious about how good things can get for me.

One of the challenges I’ve come upon trying out hearing aid solutions is confusion. You know what happens when you’re shopping for perfumes, and after a (short) while you can’t distinguish smells anymore? That’s a bit what it feels like with sound. Maybe it has to do with the rather strong “habituation” component there is in the way we process sound.

Some situations are clear-cut: for example, after trying out the Bolero Q90 hearing aids for a few weeks, I switched back to my Widex Clear 330 ones to see if I could spot a “reverse difference”. One situation where there was no debate was at the vet’s: I’d been going there regularly throughout my Bolero trial, and when I went back with my Widex aids in, I really struggled to understand what my vet was saying. The room is a bit echoey and she speaks quite fast. To make extra sure I wore the Boleros next time around.

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Tired of Batteries Falling Out of Your Hearing Aids?

Maybe it’s because I’m a newbie (less than three years) hearing aid wearer with mild-to-medium hearing loss, but this has been a subject of continued annoyance for me.

Of course, my batteries aren’t falling out of my hearing aids when I’m wearing them. No, they tend to fall out when stuffing them into pockets, bags, drying boxes, jewellery boxes, and all the other various places I put them (shhh I know it’s bad) when I take them out of my ears. Which happens, because I like my deafness when I’m alone at home, don’t need extra volume on noisy fellow travellers when I’m in public transport, and use my earbuds quite a bit for phone, music, and podcasts.

Caveat: all this might be way less true now that I’ve tasted Venture.

In any case, even if I don’t change my nasty habits, it seems that now that I’m carrying these V90s my battery-falling-out days are over. Look at the photograph closely (it’s not easy to photograph, and easy to miss):

V90 battery compartment design

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Trying Venture: It’s Smooth

A surprise was waiting for me on my last trip to Phonak headquarters in Stäfa, 10 days ago: Venture.

I had an appointment to try some Audéo hearing aids and tweak a few things that were bothering me with the fitting and the settings. As I arrived in the building, I bumped into Ora. I excitedly told her, “Do you know I’m trying Boleros? And I like them, there are really situations where they perform better than my old hearing aids.” She answered that she was delighted to hear that. I mentioned some of my beef with Soundflow. “You should try Venture! Are you going to try Venture? Tell them to make you try Venture.”

Venture? Phonak’s new platform (chip, software) for Audéo.

I headed towards the audiology lab and was welcomed by Michael and Simone. Here is what they had for me 🙂

Continue reading “Trying Venture: It’s Smooth”

Forgetting

In the same day, I both forgot that I was wearing my hearing aids before jumping under the shower, and that I should maybe carry spare batteries before going to a family gathering.

P13 Hearing Aid Batteries

As I live alone, I usually put on my hearing aids before leaving home as opposed to first thing when I jump out of bed. As I have a friend visiting these days, my hearing aid routine has changed — I’m not a morning person to start with, so add “no ears” on top of that and you get a very poor morning communicator.

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Impressions on New Hearing Aids

As promised, here are my impressions of the Bolero hearing aids I’m currently trying out (hoping I don’t get any of the technical stuff wrong here, do tell me if I did!). They have open tips, like my Widex ones have, but are BTE (entirely behind-the-ear) rather than RIC (with the receiver, the part that produces sounds, directly in the ear canal — this would be the Phonak Audéo model, which I might try in future). My Phonak audiologist Jennifer tells me it doesn’t change much, acoustically: a RIC just moves some of the technology away from behind the ear, allowing the part that sits there to be smaller — important for those, who, like Steve, appreciate when their hearing aids are invisible.

Phonak Bolero Q90

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US Audiology Students in Zambia

Would you believe that for the whole of Zambia, there is only one audiologist? You can imagine that for students from the Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences (SLHS) of Purdue University in the US, spending two weeks in the field on an exchange programme in Zambia must be quite an adventure. An opportunity to see healthcare in a completely different context, to gain clinical experience in a setting where their actions have meaning, in addition to the life experience every exchange programme is bound to provide.

I discovered their programme though the blog set up by their professor. The blog is a very lively of their trip, with lots of anecdotes and information on what they did there, from the preparation classes before their departure to a complete account of their last work day in Zambia. Go and read it and look at the photos!

I wrote to them to see if they would be interested in contributing an article for Open Ears. Two of the students, Breanne and Andrea, sent me this overview of the programme and what it had meant to them.

Graduate and undergraduate students at Purdue University have the opportunity to participate in the speech, language, and hearing sciences (SLHS) in Zambia study abroad program. This past May a group of 12 students traveled to Lusaka, Zambia to learn about the culture and provide speech and hearing screenings. We had the opportunity to meet numerous professionals at a variety of facilities to learn about the healthcare system and the services for children with disabilities in Zambia.

This year, we received a donation of hearing aids from Phonak and were able to bring these to Zambia to fit as needed. At our main partnership location, Beit Cure Hospital, we fit a hearing aid on a girl who was about 11 years old as well as an older adult. We programmed each hearing aid for their individual hearing loss and made an instant ear mold. Using instant ear mold materials is much more efficient and is used very frequently in Zambia.

Both of these patients were so thankful and we hope the follow-up goes well. The 11-year-old girl is doing very well in school and we hope that her new hearing aid will help to decrease her listening effort and enable her to make even greater progress. The adult we fit told us that she had walked to Beit Cure Hospital, which took about an hour for her to reach us. Transportation is a struggle for those in need of healthcare in Zambia and this woman walked an hour to avoid paying for the bus. She was so thankful and said “God bless you for your help” to everyone involved in the appointment, making it a very emotional appointment. She is very excited to try her new hearing aid at church and plans to continue to follow-up at Beit Cure Hospital as needed.

Working in the audiology department at Beit Cure Hospital in Zambia was a little different from the experiences we were used to at the teaching clinic within Purdue University. Everything was very fast paced and we worked alongside an ENT, which was a new experience for many of the students. Zambia has one audiologist and several audio technicians and nurses who do remarkable work. They make instant ear molds, counsel patients and answer questions, remove cerumen and foreign bodies from the ears, and many other tasks related to the ears and hearing. The teamwork we witnessed was amazing. Everyone collaborates as needed to ensure his or her patients receive the best possible care.

This was a very unique experience and we are so fortunate that this is offered through Purdue University. This was the second class of students to go to Zambia and the first time we were able to bring hearing aids to fit (thanks to Phonak for their donation!). Hopefully the program will continue and many students have the opportunity to participate in this program. We learned so much more than what we provided.

I think it’s important to remember that hearing care professionals work in very different contexts all over the world. I hope we’ll have more posts here in the coming months which go beyond Europe and the US!

Photos from the SHLS in Zambia blog.