Mrs. Homie needs one, and she’s 36. In a total chicken-and-egg scenario, she plays her freaking music so loud you can hear her coming down the street. I don’t know if she plays it so loud because she’s going dear, or if she’s going deaf because she plays it so loud. But either way, in normal conversation I have to almost shout for her to hear me.
What?
When we tried to talk my grandfather into getting hearing aids, he would always answer “I’ve heard enough.”
This is very likely to be a service-connected disability. Especially if he has tinnitus (ringing in the ears). Get him to your local County Veterans Service Office to see about this. I worked in one, and we must have seen a dozen people every week with this.
They will probably send him to the nearest VA hospital, where they will do hearing tests and explain the results to him, and the feasibility of improving it with hearing aids. The VA hospitals are pretty expert about this – they deal with a lot of people his age with similar problems.
And – if it’s service connected, it probably won’t cost him anything. A VA benefit for his service in defending our country.
I just got hearing aids a few months ago. I decided to get my hearing tested because it was obvious it was shot - I was constantly asking people to repeat themselves, had to watch TV with the closed captioning or subtitles on, etc. They found that I had moderate hearing loss and the audiologist said I could either go with hearing aids or surgery, and I finally opted for the hearing aids.
The day I went in to pick them up, the audiologist put them in my ears and then walked out in the hallway while talking to me and asking questions, and I could hear her clear as a bell. I was amazed at what I could hear. When I left the audiologist’s office, I was walking down the hall and kept hearing this kssSHICKa kssSHICKa sound - turns out it was someone walking towards me around the corner with a cup of ice that was sloshing around. I would have never heard that before. I got in my car and could hear my hands squeaking on the steering wheel. When I got to work I could people talking in cubicles two aisles away. I could hear EVERYTHING! And I quickly decided “This is going to drive me nuts!” The problem was that the default volume was way too high, but I didn’t realize it at first because I was so glad to be able to hear. I started turning them down about halfway as soon as they went in, and when I went back to the audiologist two weeks later for a checkup I asked her to crank down the default volume. I haven’t had to mess with them since.
As far as the tech-nerd factor goes, they are Bluetooth enabled! There is a device I can buy that I can wear on a lanyard around my neck, and it will connect to the hearing aids via Bluetooth. I can hook an iPod up to it or sync my cell phone to it. (I haven’t bought one yet because they’re about $300 but as soon as I’ve got the extra money I’m going to get one.)
As far as battery life goes, I have the in-the-ear aids and a battery lasts almost two weeks. Not that batteries are a factor for me because the cost of the aids included a lifetime supply of batteries, but still - I’m seeing much better battery life than what I expected.
Long story short - I’m kicking myself for not having done this years ago. At first I thought I would be self-conscious about them, but in a world where people wear Bluetooth sets on their ears all the time, I figured a pair of barely-noticeable in-the-ear aids was no big deal.