Fitting A Hearing Aid

It's been 2 years since my Tinnitus started. I think I've handled it well by not letting it affect my life and mood.  It hasn't been easy because I can't hear properly on my left ear. But thankfully Meimei has been very patient with me, always repeating when I cannot hear and not showing any ounce of frustration at all. I think that in itself really helped me.

In some ways it does however affect my work. I regularly have to ask my colleagues to repeat themselves. Sometimes I try not to ask so as not to do it so often that they become irritated. This is the biggest concern because they may not be as sympathetic as Meimei. And we definitely need this job for the family.

Meimei recently contacted her company's doctors and was referred to Nuffield Medical at Wheelock Place. We went there for a consultation and it cost a good $900+. I was referred to an audiologist to fit a hearing aid. As expected there wasn't anything the doctor could do. If there was I would have found a sure way of addressing it online. This is an ailment that tortures millions of people worldwide. If anyone found a cure, they would be a billionaire.

So we met the audiologist at Novena a few weeks ago and went through another hearing test which was much more comprehensive than the normal ones. The chart below shows the test outcome. The red line and circles are results for my right ear and blue cross for my left. As I understand it, if it falls between 0 to 20 it's normal. There will be deterioration in everyone as we age but given my age, the fall off at 2K and 6-8K is not normal. The bold T represents the estimated frequency of my Tinnitus. Based on the chart the audiologist was able to diagnose that I cannot hear certain syllabus of sounds like ch and sh clearly. Hence I am 'missing' parts of words which then inhibits my ability to interpret the words heard.

Guess I'm glad we figured out more. It seems there is a slight improvement as compared to my test at SGH 2 years ago. So the earring is slowly recovering but am unlikely to ever recover totally to what it was before. Plus there is the Tinnitus which is not going away ever.

So anyways I received my hearing aid today. It's a mid-range one that set us back $5800. But hopefully it helps me hear better. I opt for the Behind-the-Ear type. I'm not sensitive to others seeing it. In fact I rather people know I have a hard time hearing so they understand why I ask them to repeat themselves.

The audiologist says he thinks we can cure my Tinnitus. I'm not hopeful but willing to work with him. I fitted one from Re-Sound which has a Tinnitus manager function that fits white noise through the speaker. This is suppose to help my brain slowly hear that there is always a sound and stop making its own. It's a long process and may take months or years. Eh well I'm not ambitious to think I can be cured. I just don't want things to deteriorate. So I'm giving it a good go at it and see what comes out of it, if any.