Donna52

I was supposed to pick up my new hearing-aids at the audiologist's office yesterday. I have nerve deafness in both ears due to excessive loud noise over the years, and my hearing loss is severe to profound (both ears). With those aids, I could hear anything but clearly!! My aids that I have now are no longer strong enough, but these seemed to be too strong. The audiologist and 2 other girls from the office were in the room with me, and their voices sounded so strange. Almost robotic like, or like someone talking through a paper wrapping tube. The audiologist kept adjusting them, but nothing helped. It went from me not hearing anything at all, to overly loud, strange sounding voices. It was even worse when the 3 of them were talking among themselves. Of course, I'm not getting these aids. The audiologist is sending those back and will order a different set of aids.

My problem is: How in the world does a normal hearing person who has never had any hearing loss understand what we are trying to tell them regarding how we hear?? Maybe that is why we don't get any answers from ENT's. They simply do not know anything about abnormal hearing because they haven't experienced it.

Another question I have is why do sounds like the phone ringing sound normal using an aid, but people's voices sound so strange?? I'm more interested in understanding the person talking to me, not some stupid background noise. Amplification just doesn't do it for me when it comes to hearing people when they speak. P.S. I did have normal hearing in my earlier years and it only started getting worse in the late 90's, so I do know how normal hearing sounds.