5th May 2015
Yesterday's topic was diagnosis, following that, many children/adults then get fitted for hearing aids in the hope of getting some benefit to their hearing.
Our Princess was fitted for her first hearing aids at about 8 weeks and she began wearing them a few weeks later.
It was a time of mixed emotions and confusion for us as parents. We had never used hearing aids before, so we needed to learn how to look after them, change batteries, observe for moulds getting to small etc. Princess wasn't used to having anything near her ears and she was now about 12weeks old - we seemed to replace the aids into her ears several times every minute. It was a really frustrating time for us, constantly signing "no, don't touch your ears!" and replacing the hearing aids (HAs), all the while watching for reactions, but we didn't see any.
For those of you who don't know much about hearing aids, here is a little summary for you.
1. The ear mould sits inside the ear, this should be a snug fit (childrens moulds may need replaced every few weeks!), if the mould doesn't fit well, there may be a lot of squealing from the HAs (this can also happen if the volume is set too high)
2. The processor is worn behind the ear, it contains the microphones to pick up sound from the environment. The processor also contains the batteries to power the HA
3. A tube links the mould with the processor and essentially sends the amplified sounds into the ear canal
4. As HAs send sound into the ear canal, they are only suitable for some patients. Children with Glue Ear, for example, which is a conductive hearing loss, may not particularly benefit from HAs the sound is unable to conduct throughout the inner ear.
5. Patients will get mixed benefits from HAs, the aim is to achieve hearing within the "speech bubble" to enable to user to hear and participate in spoken conversations. If the outcomes are not useful, patients may decide to see if they are eligible for cochlear implants, bone anchored hearing aids or simply do without technology. No direction is wrong, provided the patient is given support for their decision, by health & educational services as well as family and friends.
Whilst, we are very thankful for technology, hearing aids did not help Princess hear, there was no evidence that they helped at all. For us, the experience was stressful - she constantly took her HAs off, often tried to eat them (big choking risk from batteries) in addition to the fact that we couldn't see any benefit for her.
We had already started learning to sign and had been signing with Princess for a few months, so thankfully the lack of benefit from the HAs wasn't a huge or unexpected problem for us. However, I will always wonder if it was necessary to put her and us through those few months, if there was a way of predicting usefulness of HAs from audiological test results - but that is a question that will never be answered.
Some HA users, will gain benefit from their technology, but they will still need or desire to use sign language. This could be to aid understanding, to allow the user to relax in the conversation (listening artificially is very tiring) or because it is the language they prefer. Others may be able to hear really well with HAs or chose to complement their hearing by lip reading. The important thing to remember is that once technology is removed, the patient will definitely have a problem hearing, but this will be different for every individual. Please remember to use the communication tips from yesterday's blog for all deaf people, even those wearing HAs, as often they need some extra communication cues in order to follow the conversation.
Thanks for reading,
Goodnight,
Sara xx
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