Our Hearing Care Magazine (Opn S) Hearing Magazine | Page 26

HEARING CARE Q. What prompted you to consider that you might benefit from wearing hearing aids? At the age of 13 I was given NHS aids as I was diagnosed with a severe hearing loss. At 21 my hearing loss then progressed to severe. At this point I got an MRI scan and was diagnosed with otosclerosis in the middle ear. FUTURE PERFECT with Nuala Donnellan This led me to receiving a middle ear implant. More recently I didn’t feel I was getting enough from my hearing aids so I went privately to get better technology. If people can, they should get them as they really are life changing. Q. Did you have any particular style of hearing aid in mind when you first visited the audiologist? I didn’t have a style and I didn’t do research – I didn’t know what was on the market or what the prices were. I was getting a lot of infections because of the full shell mould. At times I had to take this out and I was at a loss completely. I wanted better technology and wanted to be able to hear more frequencies. I felt this was important to avoid losing my speech or language, I wanted to keep this ability at the level I was used to. My friends were saying to me I wasn’t saying things correctly and they had to teach me how to pronounce things. Since getting my new hearing aids, people have noticed that my vocabulary is improving. I’ve noticed that my speech is improving with them too.