Hearing Evaluation - A Good Deal

Well, I have noticed that I have a problem at times understanding certain people, so I mentioned it to Dr. Ramsay the last time I had an appointment with him. I told him I had received a number of invitations in the mail from people that sell hearing aids, but that I did not want to go to them, strictly because they were in the business to sell hearing aids.

He recommended that I see the people at Eleanor M. Luce Center for Communication, Speech, Language & Hearing and I ended up getting an appointment for yesterday.

Now my Medicare Insurance does not cover hearing aids or hearing evaluations, so this was out of pocket expense for me. The charge for this hearing evaluation, which takes about two hours is $130. Hard to believe that someone will spend two hours with you for a hearing evaluation and only charge you $130, but they did.

I had some personal concerns, because people would talk to me and I understood only gibberish and when I asked them to repeat, it still came out the same, even though they kept saying it louder. I have had times when some people talk to me on the phone that I just cannot understand them. I filled out a questionnaire and in it was asked if I had one ear that I could hear better than the other and I said "No".

Interestingly enough the evaluation showed that within a certain frequency range my hearing is normal. In regards to word recognition, which I had never heard before, I have one ear that is 92% and the other ear is 56%. This test was listening to a group of unrelated words and repeating what I heard. The evaluator told me that the ear with 56% could not be helped with the use of a hearing aid and suggested that I see a Dr. Bruce Whitaker, an ear specialist. The evaluator told me to ask those telling me something I could not understand to try using different words to see if I could understand them then.

Last night as I was listening to television, I blocked my 92% ear and sure enough, all I heard was gibberish out of the 56% ear. I suspect that the poor people I was talking too on the phone with may have been talking in the bad ear which is really good to know, so I don't put the telephone receiver up to that ear.

The whole evaluation was a great relief to me, as it does make a person wonder, especially at my age, what the problem is when you can hear someone talking to you, but only understand gibberish. I knew then, there was nothing wrong with my brain when I could understand the words in my other ear.

I have my appointment with Dr. Whitaker on April 28, 2011. It will be interesting to see what he has to say, because should the same thing happen to my other ear, I definitely would not understand what people are telling me, even though I can hear them. For a number of years now, I have always had the closed caption going on my TV, which is a big help, although I do understand most everything

Meanwhile, I will have to rely on my belief that Father Julian is giving a good homily, even though I don't understand what he is saying most of the time. The hearing evaluator suggested that maybe the parish should look into the possibility of hearing devices for the hard of hearing, that I suspect work similar to the one we have at church that goes wireless through the speakers, that would go wireless to a little box and hearing device that a person could wear and turn on during the homily. I had never heard of that before, but if anybody has would be interested in hearing about it.