I had the pleasure of meeting a woman a few weeks ago and hear her story about hearing loss. She has 2008 behind the ear hearing aids from a retail hearing chain in our area. She has never been happy and can’t enjoy life, she is a young 60 and very outgoing. This is all starting to change because of her hearing loss. She was referred to our office from a patient and I happened to be there that day when she came in to talk with one of our dispensers. I introduced myself and sat with her to talk about the results of her hearing evaluation and what her life is like.

She is a music lover, a people person and loves to have fun. She says “my hearing loss is getting in the way of enjoying everything life has to offer”. She has a lot of trouble at her meetings that she attends. “I just sit there and pretend I can hear what is said and yes I do have my hearing aids on.”

I looked over her results and thought to myself this is going to be a challenge, but I love challenges. I explained to her about the new products that Phonak has and how it is changing people’s lives. The dispenser that was working with this patient recommended Exelia Art behind the ear hearing instruments. I thought that would give us enough tools to really help her in some of her tough environments. In addition it has sound recover which will give her better word recognition. I am a big fan of sound recover, if not the biggest.

She decided to go ahead and we were all excited for her, but she was very nervous. On the day of delivery she kept saying how nervous she was, and I have to admit I was also a little nervous. But I have great faith and thought “she will be just fine”. The delivery went very well and her word recognition went up quite a bit. But the real challenge would be out in the noisy world we all live in. By now you are probably saying what does her hearing loss look like? She has a 70db average slightly sloping hearing loss with a word recognition score of 40%. Well after we were finished she seemed much more relaxed and was ready to get out and give them a good test.

So the day of her first follow-up visit I was excited and nervous to see how her first week had been. I looked at her and asked; “How did you do?” I paused and followed with “let’s start with what you don’t like.” She looked up at me, smiled and said “I don’t have any complaints.” She said “I could understand what my friends and family are saying now.” “I can hear my friend on the phone in California and did not have to have her repeat one word.” She goes on by saying that her meeting she attended last month she couldn’t hear anything they were saying. She said at this meeting “I could understand everybody, I am so happy!”

I am so thrilled for her and extremely happy that she is able to enjoy everything she loves once again. Awesome!