Hear, Hear

After I lost 90% of my hearing (due to a Covid-caused inner ear infection), I made the decision to get hearing aids.

While my ear infection was successfully treated I still had my previous hearing loss which, while not severe, was enough to interfere with activities in my daily life. Following conversations, especially in noisy environments, were difficult. Music had lost its ‘sparkle’ and understanding dialogue in television and films, particularly with the mumbling of modern actors, was becoming impossible.

So, after consulting with some of my friends, I explored my options. I found the internet site ZipHearing, which was highly rated and offered a substantial discount. The site works as a brokerage, working with selected audiologists, to send customers their way and handle all the billing issues. I got in touch with Jeff (who is also the president of ZipHearing!) and he explained everything and got the ball rolling.

After a consultation with a certified audiologist who had an office near me, I sprung for a pair of Widex 440 Moment hearing aids. A few weeks (and $4600) later I was hearing things like I used to years ago. I had avoided hearing aids for years due to the older models having problems with latency and ‘artificial-ness’. The newer aids (and the Widex in particular) are much more natural sounding. The sound processing they do is very sophisticated, yet I remain unaware of what it is doing, it also has a iPhone app to tweak the sound if needed.

Some remaining issues are that the earpieces, while fairly comfortable, remain inserted in your ear canals and I’m aware of them and can be tiring (especially after a full day's use) and a lot of the restored high frequency sounds are really just noise that I could do without.