What does your hearing health care provider actually do? We start off our by day reviewing patient files and preparing.... preparing to help you hear, to help you communicate better, to help you enjoy your day. We prepare to... Listen.
What kind of problems are you having with your hearing? Do you already wear hearing instruments? Maybe you just have ear wax. Even if you already wear hearing aids just a little ear wax causes big issues. Maybe we just need to flush your ears and remove ear wax. Maybe not. Maybe we need to do a compete audiometric workup including tympanometry to determine the health of the middle ear. We listen. What is important to you? What do you need? What do you want?
We also get excited! Today was one of those days. A patient of mine who has worn our hearing instruments (several sets over the years) recently lost his right hearing aid. He was out of the country. About 5 years ago the hearing in his left ear was so deteriorated that we investigated a cochlear implant as an option for his hearing. After a visit to Mayo Clinic he decided to pursue this route of treatment. So... for the last 5 years he has worn a cochlear implant in one ear and our hearing instrument in the other ear. Now; a cochlear implant is an electronic device that is implanted and bypasses damaged hearing hair cells in order to directly stimulate the auditory nerve. There is a part that is implanted and a part that is worn outside the ear that looks like a behind the ear hearing aid. Once this surgery is performed there is no more “natural hearing” with out the implant. When he takes off the external part at night before going to bed he turns off the world. There is no sound at all in the left ear. None... but just on the left side. On the right side we have been able to fit him with a hearing aid... but he lost it.. while in another country... and his cochlear implant died too. His better ear is also profound. So for 3 weeks he was in almost total darkness. His wife was at her wits end.
He emailed us. We planned. We ordered in some products, we had special custom power receivers for his right ear built off of his scans at Starkey Hearing Technologies so that we would be prepared when he got here. We Prayed. We prayed it was still within hearing instrument range. You see, Mayo Clinic wants him to consider a cochlear implant for this ear too. But, if he has a cochlear implant in both, then when he takes them off then it is TOTAL deafness. He does not want this. At least if he has a hearing aid in one ear then when he takes it off... even though it is bad... there is still distance sound. His hearing got a little bit worse since his last test, but because of his history with us we could estimate this change. As we fit him with his new Genesis Ai Bluetooth hearing instrument with artificial intelligence and gyroscopes in the right ear... WE SMILED! He could understand phone calls streamed directly into that hearing aid! We set up a program/memory with a dedicated music memory that provides the best music quality that ANYONE could ask for. He said, “oh wow! I stopped listening to music years ago” as he continued streaming his music from his phone into his ear. We Hugged! We BELIEVE... everyday.... “To Hear Better is To Live Better”.