(Editor: More from My Dad’s Book on Hearing Aids):
How long to keep the aid on at a first wearing is problematic. Specific advice is often given on this subject which although apt to vary in detail is usually aimed at increasing the “wearing time” each day until is is in full use. The key factor is that it is necessary to persevere. Somewhere there is a mean between “can’t-put-up-with-the-damned-thing-any- longer-and-will-never-put-it-on-again” and a more robust and more rational need to recover near-normal hearing. If the aid has been correctly fitted it should not be uncomfortable to wear, but the odds are that sooner of later you will tire of an unfamiliar background noise. You may not have heard, or been aware of , this background noise for some time, even years, and it may well become very obtrusive in quite a short time. If this happens, don’t remove your aid, just turn the volume down until the background noise is truly in the background. Of course, if the earmold startst to irritate, or feels like a football in your ear, then remove it. But replace it as soon as every you can – it doesn’t take long to get use to the feeling.
Next, perhaps after a day or two – if you are a televiewer- try watching and listening to the televsion. I find that the best tactic with television is to turn the television volume up fairly high and the volume of the heairng aid down. This makews the television loud for the neigbours, and it is necessary to strike a balance. Experiment with it. If the neighbours come crashing in, you have got it wrong – experiment some more.(Editor: I don’t think this is the advice I’d be giving. I would hope that someone using good hearing ours, like ours for example, could maintain a better relationship with their neigbours by relying on the hearing aid to do the amplifying – particularly since the hearing aid is personalised to your particular hearing needs)
Television should offer no problems if tackled in this way, either with speech of music, apart from the occasional lapse, usually in films referred to in Chapter 1 when you are deprived of the speaker’s face. You may find, particularly if you are mon-aural (that is, with hearing on one side only) that conversation alongside the television is difficult or impossible, because you are unable to discriminate between the television speech and the conversation , and both become “scrambled”. There is no effective cure for this other than to turn the television down, or off.(Editor: I would certainly expect a better result with top quality modern hearing aids. He was very deaf and it was more than 12 years ago. )
