A happy Blamey Saunders clinic client wrote in to thank our Sydney audiologist for fitting her hearing aids. Her letter shows how good quality hearing aids can help every aspect of your life.

Dear Ryan

Think it’s about time I drop you a note and thank you for the session where you fitted my hearing aids.

I found our session really enjoyable – and am amazed at how you helped turn a potential defeatist session into one that was fun and made me look forward to trying out my new hearing aids.

Love them for bicycling particularly because birds song has changed from nice to beautiful … and I enjoy being able to hear a whole lot of other sounds around me such as little kids laughing and calling out (and taking the helmet on and off is no problem – the hearing aids stay safely in my ears).

Love them – particularly because of the new clarity they give me. When singing in my choir, for example, I can now distinguish the different voice parts. Without hearing aids, It sounded more like a ‘porridge’ – and I could mainly hear the Sopranos (probably because they tend to sing the loudest).

I can also, for the first time hear the other altos next to me – even if they don’t sing really loud.

I find I need to say “could you please repeat…” much less often – and kids and grandkids say that I speak less loudly. The other day, my daughter-in-law mentioned how glad they all are that I’m becoming much more involved in what’s going around me – and that it now is more of a two-way street.

However, I seem to have become a lazy listener – and am looking for ways to retrain my brain. Sometimes I find myself saying “could you please repeat…” only to realise afterwards, that I had actually heard – but somehow not computed what I heard. Think I’ve found an online listening course which I plan to try. It’s called LACE.

Note from Elaine: It can take time for your brain to adjust to the sound stimulation provided by your hearing aids. Some people give up, thinking that their hearing aids are not giving them any benefit, when in fact the more you wear them the easier listening becomes. I’ve put together an eBook called How to Get the Most Out of Your Hearing Aids to help with this very phenomenon. You can download it for free by filling in the form found at the bottom of this web page.

Some of the challenging situations that I really wanted help with:

• Conversing across a large table in a restaurant now works much better.
• Conversing in a very, very noisy restaurant also fine. Went to a place where all reviewers had complained about the noise with my son and two little grandsons – and could hear fine… Wow!
• Hearing the instructor in a training course, I am undertaking at the moment: I couldn’t hear her before, whereas  I could hear other people – but with my hearing aids, her voice is now completely clear.
• Music is so much more enjoyable – and thanks for installing the music program for me.
• Still having problems when multiple role play exercises are going on in a room – but then so do most other people – even the much younger ones.

Tried the Incus for the first time and did a minor adjustment – reducing ‘rustling’ – very straight forward using my iPhone – and fun to be able to do this adjustment myself.

And last but not least: I am much less tired by the end of the day – I guess I have to work less hard hearing and understanding what is going on around me.

Warm regards – and again thanks a million.

Annette L.