Apr 9, 2008
I have a couple questions for my great readers:
Which hearing aids do you wear? Are you happy with them? - How do they help change your life for the better? What don’t you like about them?
Did you pay for them out of pocket? Were you able to get financial assistance from Insurance or other sources? Is the current recession affecting your choice to buy a hearing aid?
If you want to let me know anonymously, email me at davidsigismund@gmail.com. All information shared with me is confidential and private. Otherwise, just post here. Thank you for reading this blog. Your opinions matter to me.
Apr 9, 2008 at 11:49 am
I’ll start first..
I wear a pair of ReSound Canta 7’s for a “moderately severe” hearing loss in both ears.
These hearing aids are a step above my last (Resound 5000) and they do a better job of eliminating the noise I don’t want to hear and the directional microphones really pick out speech well if I’m facing a speaker in a loud room. They make a huge quality of life improvement for me because they help me communicate with people. When I’m hiking alone in the mountains I often take them out and practice awareness without them but I also like to hear the rustling in the bushes and distance streams.
I’d like the dynamic range to go farther into the high frequencies. I’d like to see hearing aid manufacturers stop making advertisements and marketing claims that aren’t backed up by clinical research. I want to see more manufacturers improving on advanced analog designs (that are digitally programmable)…among other things.
Cost: $6,000 dollars for the pair. My PPO plan from Blue Shield paid nothing toward my hearing test or my hearing aids. Whats the point of calling it “health insurance”?
So far I am not qualifying for assistance from Vocational Rehabilitation (for a couple of different reasons) or other sources.
David
Apr 9, 2008 at 12:24 pm
I wear a pair of Widex Inteos. I just got them a few months ago. They were my first new aids in ten years. So far they are pretty great. I like that there are several settings, but I am still figuring out which one works in each part of my life.
I think they cost about $6k but thankfully I qualified for Vocational Rehab support so I only had to pay 1% of the cost myself (about 60 dollars.)
Apr 13, 2008 at 10:40 am
Another great post from you. The “dynamic range” to which you refer, is really the enhancement of critical high frequency speech information you are missing probably due to cochlear dead zones. Dynamic range is the range from your threshold of audibility and the point where that sound becomes uncomfortable. Which is why advanced signal processing and compression available in today’s hearing aids helps you.
Apr 15, 2008 at 1:31 pm
Kelly,
The settings can be a little bit confusing to work with at first. The vast majority of the time I find myself on the default setting..then I often use my second setting in noisy situations where I’m trying to listen to people in a loud conference room, bar, or concert. That one works nicely and without it I probably wouldn’t catch a single thing people said.
I then I have two more settings for music and telecoil. The music setting is nice ..but I usually listen to music in the car and I keep it on default for that because the music setting doesn’t deal with the car noise very well.
Apr 19, 2008 at 9:51 am
I currently wear Oticon Digifocus Superpower II and the next most likely candidate will be Phonak Naida. They were paid fully out of my pocket. What is this Vocational Rehab support that you speak of? Is there any insurance or supplemental insurance that covers hearing aids?
Apr 19, 2008 at 10:43 am
Hi Ganesh,
The Vocational Rehab is a bureaucratic arm intended to help people with disabilities find employment and education. It confuses me a bit how free hearing aids ends up being thrown into the mix- but it makes sense when I think about hearing aids as a very valuable aid for any job.
I, for example, don’t want employment help. But my understand is - I can still be helped by the VR. But you can still contact your local (state level) VR department and get a hold of the specific person in charge of hearing impairments. That person can often give you free hearing aids. I’m not completely sure about the hoops you have to jump..i’m assuming you don’t need to be hooked up with a job by them..you can just get free hearing aids as part of your “employment assistance”.
As awesome as the VR seems to be for some people - I have been told by the people at VR that it is a VERY limited (albeit untapped) resource. If we ALL went and got them free they would run out of the ability to do so really quickly. I also think that people who aren’t working - the old and young should be covered by better resources. They aren’t.
Here is the info for your New York City VR:
New York Vocational Rehabilitation
New York Vocational and Educational Services for Individuals with Disabilities
One Commerce Plaza, Room 1603
Albany, NY 12234
Toll Free: (800)222-5627
vesidadm@mail.nysed.gov
http://www.vesid.nysed.gov/
Thanks to Cindy at Beethoven’s Ears Blog for the original information. http://beethovensears.com/free-hearing-aids/
Apr 19, 2008 at 1:21 pm
Hi David,
This is a great site and I finally have linked to your blog from HearingMojo.
When I had mild hearing loss I wore Widex Senso CIC (completely in the canal). I went through several pairs at nearly $5k a pair. They worked well but I found them uncomfortable and feedback was a problem.
When I got sudden severe hearing loss in both ears I went to Widex Diva BTEs (beind the ear). They always worked well but feedback was a problem in the left ear which needs a lot of amplification. The Wides BTEs were about $4,500 a pair. I never graduated to the Inteo which I heard has better sound processing because I recently moved to America Hears.
Two months ago I discovered America Hears (www.americahears.com) which sells digital hearing aids direct over the internet. I got a pair of ITEs (in the ear) and they’ve been awesome. I made my own earmolds from a kit they sent me, faxed them my audiogram, and they sent me a fully programmed pair that have worked unbelievably well. They also send a kit with a programmer so you can adjust the programming yourself, or you can talk to their audiologists and they will download program adjustments they do for you over the internet and through the programmer that plugs your hearing aids into your PC. It’s pretty amazing, though you have to be comfortable doing a lot of the work yourself. They only charge $995 for each hearing aid (fixed pricing for all their hearing aids- they also have nice open-fit hearing aids as well as BTEs). They use 32-channel digital signal processors with very good software from Dynamic Hearing, and good components including fully directional microphones. They are better with speech in noise than the Widex aids were and I’m loud sounds don’t bother me as much. So they really got it right for me.
RE Vocational Rehabilitation - I had never heard of that before and will look into it. I couldn’t work at my day job without hearing aids and a lot of other assistive technology.
Apr 19, 2008 at 7:31 pm
I wrote a comment about VR on Hearing Mojo back in October 2006:
http://p6.hostingprod.com/@hearingmojo.com/blog-mt/blog-mt/2006/02/how_to_buy_a_hearing_aid_if_yo.html#comments
Cindy