Not Your Grandmother's Hearing Aids

Well actually I hope they are - today's high-tech hearing aids are a great improvement over the big, beige "bananas" of old, I'm told. The older ones were analog and amplified every sound, whereas the newer ones are digital and programmable, which means the audiologist can customize them for your  needs and hearing profile.

I'm reporting from my latest health-related adventure; skip this post if you're looking for Dharma. Consider this a public-service announcement; we will shortly return to the usual programming.

Getting a hearing aid is pretty complicated, and it's not easy to find good information. This is by far the best advice I found, by a longtime wearer named Karen McGrane:
http://karenmcgrane.com/?s=hearing+aid

Backtracking to give you my story...
Monday I had a hearing test and separate consultations with an otologist and an audiologist. The graph from the test was shaped like a cliff: low tones were normal, but higher tones fell sharply into the moderately severe range. I was surprised at how bad it was. The otologist advised me that my hearing loss from the Cisplatin and whole-brain radiation was probably permanent, which makes the decision to get a hearing aid more straightforward. I knew my hearing was getting worse but thought it would improve after I was done with chemo, as it had in the past.

My oncologist had suggested I skip my previous treatment until I saw the audiologist - because even Taxol could damage my hearing and because my CA-125 dropped 30 points in a month (to 15, safely within the normal range), so it wasn't critical that I get chemo then. The otologist said it was fine to go ahead with the chemo this week, but then my white count was too low. For a lot of patients, the only thing worse than getting chemo is not getting it, but I don't mind the break.

I'm happy with my high-end loaner hearing aids (HA). I wish all problems could be so easily remedied with technology, if only it wasn't so expensive. HAs cost $2,500 - $5,000 for a pair, and few insurance plans contribute anything toward the cost; mine is no exception. As McGrane put it, "Wearing hearing aids is just like wearing glasses, except for the part where they cost as much as a used car and you wear them inside your head." Because of the electronics in the HA, I have to keep reminding myself not to wear them in the shower : )

It seems crazy that there's no financial help. Given that good hearing aids can really improve your quality of life, I feel for everyone who would get one if they were cheaper, or would have a better one if they could afford it. In my dream world, Medicare and Medicaid and regular health insurance would at least "go halfsies" on them.

I have a follow-up appointment with the same "audie" (audiologist) to talk more about different models and am also getting a consultation at a non-profit called the Hearing, Speech & Deafness Center, which was recommended by my classmate RobL after his mother got hers there. The consultation is free, and you can return your hearing aids after a 2-month trial; the first place had a 1-month trial; I saw that other places have fees if you return them within the trial phase.

I am continuing my test drive, trying out different conditions: noisy restaurant, group discussion in a big room, etc. As I mentioned in a previous post, I watched Downton Abbey, because I tried watching it before and couldn't understand the English accents; with the hearing aids, I could understand almost everything. We signed up again for Netflix disks in the mail so that I could make use of subtitles, which aren't available when Netflix streams English movies to your TV, but it's nice not to be so dependent on subtitles for movies in my native language.