Hearing health care has plateau’s that you will encounter on your journey to your best hearing. When you were fit with your hearing instruments great care was taken in the testing, selection, and fitting of the instruments. Just like our teeth, hairstyle, and eyes, hearing health can benefit from routine care and maintenance. After your fitting, you will be set with follow-up appointments.
These appointments will first be for the fine-tuning of the hearing instruments. After several appointments and you are happy with the sound expectations of your "new ears" then you will be set with cleaning appointments for your hearing aids and your ears.
In the beginning, adjusting to new hearing instruments can be challenging. Even though Starkey’s latest hearing instruments make over 54 million automatic adjustments an hour… you still will be experiencing sounds that you have not heard at normal levels in a while. I get many people that tell me, " I don't know what normal is any more". At first, don’t panic, good hearing instruments self-adjust, if something is bugging you in the beginning it probably won't in a few days. With Starkey Hearing Instruments, after the fitting, the aids will "self-fine-tune" their noise processors after approximately 180 hours of wearing time. They measure and classify sounds and speech into different categories and calculate speech-to-noise ratios; thus, trying to always provide the best speech signal for the type of background noise you are in.
A couple of suggestions for your appointments. First, bring a third party. Spouse, family member, or friend. They will have additional insight as to how well you are doing. If you are having difficulties understanding someone, maybe they are soft-spoken, then we can put you both in a noisy restaurant setting and adjust while you are there. The hearing instruments record specific data that gives useful speech and noise information, however; if you are having difficulties in specific places then jot down some quick notes. How long are you wearing your instruments per day? The data log in your hearing instrument won't lie! LOL! A minimum of 7 hours per day for most people... but if they are comfortable then wear them from the time you get up until bed. To help keep your brain healthy we strive for a wearing time of 12 hours per day.
Remember, they are hearing “aids” and our goal is to make them a useful benefit that “aids” in your everyday life. We want them to be a joy and not a hassle.