H:

Measuring your success:

When fitted with a hearing instrument your audiologist needs to establish early in your dispensing if you are settling down and benefiting from wearing your instrument. To do this we use measuring systems to periodically assess your progress.

We realise that if wearing a hearing aid is new to you - you will inevitability feel initially overwhelmed by the volume of sound heard. You may not initially gain clarity from this apparent volume increase. Let's explore why this is:

Hearing losses in most cases begin in our early thirties and very slowly get worse year on year thereafter. They become noticeable normally when we've reached retirement age. This progressive reduction in the ability to hear speech is not atypical, it is common among the general population. Some people decide to do something about their personal hearing before it gets too noticeable by others around them. These individuals have a greater chance of alleviating the effects of becoming hard of hearing by wearing a corrective devise earlier.

Wearing a corrective devise for the very first time.

Your audiologist will advise you that you are going to hear sounds a lot louder than you've heard for several years - this apparent increase in sound level disturbs some people as they believe that all sounds are going to be amplified to that apparent level from then on. Your brain needs, once more, to become accustomed to your environmental sound levels; this process will take some 10 to 16 weeks dependent upon how long you wear your correction devise daily. The more often worn and the greater the wear period the shorter the settling down period will take. When eventually you become accustomed to your environmental sound levels your brain, and it's nerve from the cochlea to the brain, will accept the heard volume and at that point the heard sounds will quieten by themselves - this is a totally natural process known as acclimatization.

If your audiologist can help you through this process they will. A PDF file identified as the "Environmental Situation Sheet" is available by email request, which lists some 40 common situations and shows 25 graduated boxes. Each set of boxes has the word "Bass" bottom (Left) and "Treble" top (Right). If we know that by increasing the Bass, sounds will become louder and more mellow and therefore by increasing the Treble sounds, the sound your hearing will become quieter but will have more clarity. Then circling or ticking a colour from the center outwards either left or right will inform your audiologist of the amount of correction needed for that identified situation. Mark between the words "Bass" and "Treble" the number applicable to that situation and if you just want to identify a correction in volume and not the timbre; beside the number put the letters "OV" standing for "Overall Volume". You don't Have to use all the boxes and if you come across a situation not listed please identify it in your own words somewhere on the sheet and allocate that situation with a number you can place between the words "Bass" and "Treble".

Examples:

A correction in overall volume of sound whilst in a restaurant would look like:

A correction in the amount of treble whilst in the company of several ladies talking would look like this - asking for more bass.

A correction in listening to distant voices would look like this: