Outside the office, I try to fly a bit under the radar screen about my profession.  I do this because when I mention I'm an audiologist and that I design hearing aids for a living, the conversation inevitably turns to hearing aids.  I broke my rule a few weeks ago and I seem to have helped one man find the right hearing aid.  Hopefully telling the story will help someone reading here as well.

I was at a meeting at church and I could hear a hearing aid whistling the entire meeting.  I localized the sound to one gentleman with no hearing aids in his ears.  After the meeting ended and we were the only two in the room, I asked him if he wore hearing aids.  His response was "well, I don't wear them but I have them in my pocket."  He then proceeded to pull out four, small in-the-ear style hearing aids.  One of them was whistling so I immediately took the battery out of that one.  I mentioned to the gentleman that I was an audiologist and that I could hear it whistling and then I asked him why he didn't wear the aids.  He mentioned that he hated the way his voice sounded with the aids in his ears and he also mentioned that he didn't get enough help in noise with them.  Unfortunately, this man just didn't have the right hearing aids.  It was obvious to me that he had the kind of hearing loss that can be fit with "open" hearing aids (see the picture).  These are a style of hearing aid that generally fit behind the ear and are coupled into the ear with a thin tube and dome.  What this hearing aid does is allow the user to not get that plugged up sensation that also causes the voice to sound funny.  In addition, these hearing aids have directional microphones that help with hearing in noise.  I recommended this type of hearing aid to the gentlemen and he took my advice and tried one.  Fortunately for him, he reports today that he is a satisfied, happy hearing aid user.  Unfortunately, for me he has also told everyone with a hearing loss at my church that I helped him so I spend way too much time talking about hearing aids when I'm not at work now.