I was working with a patient today, who lives in a retirement home here in Florida. Her name is Lee and she is 103 years young; she is so full of life and is just amazing to talk with. During our conversation today, she told me that everyone at the retirement home will tell the new people, “Hey, there’s Lee and she is 103 years old.” Lee said to me, “Can’t they just introduce me and not always have to say my age?”

The reason I am writing about Lee is that at age 102 she decided she wanted new hearing instruments. She felt her old hearing instruments were not working anymore and was ready to upgrade to something different.  She said, ” I want to be able to enjoy life and hear everything I can while I am still alive.” Lee also suffers from macular degeneration, but still can see enough to get around and can walk fairly well. She loves to listen to the television, and she attends church services and is still able to understand the pastor when he is giving his sermon.

So many times I hear people telling me, “I am too old for hearing aids.” I don’t believe age has anything to do with it. I believe if you set your mind to it you can do anything you want. She can’t see to change the batteries so she decided to enlist a friend to help her change her batteries. She says “where there is a will there is a way.” She stands by that and she is a hero in my eyes, nothing gets her down. Oh, sorry I just lied she doesn’t like it when the Tampa Bay Rays lose!

I hope that this article might help someone who is struggling to make that first step to get help with their hearing. Hearing loss does not just affect the person with the loss but their friends and families also suffer. Please pass this article along to someone you might know that is struggling to take the steps necessary to get back in the land of the hearing.

Do you have trouble hearing on your cell phone with your hearing aid?
Maybe this will work for you.

I love a good challenge, and I meet quite a few on a weekly basis. One challenge in particular is cell phone use with one of my patients. She has a terrible time on the cell phone and she does not have a bluetooth compatible phone. I use a device that is a silhouette that hangs on the back of the ear and you have to put your hearing instrument in telecoil mode to use the phone. You have to have a telecoil in your hearing instrument in order to use this device, not all hearing instruments have telecoils installed on them. Talk with your hearing health care professional to see if your hearing instrument has a telecoil.
I saw my patient several weeks ago and she keeps complaining about the phone use, so I introduced this device I had to see if she wanted to give it a try. I hooked it up and went outside to call her and she said she could hear every word and it was crystal clear. I thought cool, this was her biggest challenge, but then she mentions that her land line phone was hard to hear on also. Well, we hooked it up to the cordless home phone and she could hear real well on it also.
As a joke she told me she uses the old Sony Walkman to listen to tapes(remember those) when she goes for a walk at night. So I thought it has a headphone jack on that I wonder if that would work. So we plugged it in and she turned on her telecoil and bingo ole’ blue eyes was coming in loud and clear.
Ok, so the real challenge was that this device is supposed to be used with Behind the Ear hearing instruments only. Well this young lady had half-shell hearing instruments(smaller in the ear instruments) which in theory are not supposed to work with this type. I was truly amazed that I could link everything up to this device with no problems what so ever. I saw her the other day and she just rants and raves about how she can walk around and clean her house while talking on the phone and having both hands free. I believe everyone should think outside the box, and just because someone says “that won’t work” doesn’t mean they are always right.

Story number 3: FM receivers with a Zoomlink

Mrs. D.: Our patient fit in November 2008 with Naida V UP’s. She has a very severe loss in both ears with her left ear falling at 60 and 70 across the board and her Right ear not going above 90. Her discrimination at her evaluation was 40%. She is a great lady with very realistic expectations about her hearing loss. She is not ashamed to admit to people she has a hearing loss and will ask them to speak up or repeat. We worked diligently with aural rehab and managed to get her discrimination up to 52%. She was still having trouble hearing television, in the dining room, and other group situations. Enter the Phonak FM system. We put a FM receiver on each instrument and linked them with a Zoomlink. We found a good position spot by her television speaker to put her zoomlink and it was game on. When she turns on her FM to watch television she turns the volume on the television so low that I struggle to hear it. She hears it loud and clear. She says she can get up and go to the bathroom and she can still hear the television. WOW! She took it to a meeting and placed her Zoomlink on the table by the speaker and heard every word. She said before the FM she couldn’t hear anything that the speaker was saying. Double WOW!! Just another one of those extra things that can be added to enhance an already fabulous instrument.