New Hearing Aids and The Real World

So you just purchased new hearing aids. You have been to the hearing health professional and picked up your new devices. Your hearing practitioner programmed them for you, showed you how to use them, how to care for them and how to put them in and take them out, but now you are on your own and everything sounds funny. Your ears kind of hurt, you are slightly tired and you have a bit of a headache.  Well, this is normal. Getting hearing aids is a big change. You need to learn how to hear in a new way and it can be a bit much for anyone. Your ears are working differently again and this is a sudden change, unlike the gradual hearing loss you were probably experiencing. New hearing aids can improve quality of life, but first you have to make it through the adjustment period. 

There are many sounds coming at you all at once and because of this you may tire easily; you might have a slight headache due to the overwhelming amount of sound and your ears might hurt a bit because there is a foreign object in them. But this is all perfectly normal and soon you will get used to all of the noise you’re hearing. So here are some tips to help out while getting used to your new hearing aids.

• Start off by wearing your hearing aids for only a couple hours each day. Play around with the programs and the volume to get used to each setting. It may take time to find the ‘sweet spot’ in each program!
• Wear your hearing aids in a quiet room or location. Listen to what is around you and determine what sounds are coming from where. Ease yourself into conversation with others, as well as into nosier environments, as both of these can take a lot of a person at first.
• Wear your hearing aid for only as long as you can bear. It is going to take some time to get used to the hearing aid in your ear and it can be uncomfortable at first. However, if it hurts consistently or severely, the mold may need to be remade or adjusted so go back to your hearing health professional and discuss this with them
• Talk to yourself. You will sound different to again. You will sound louder to yourself and will need to learn to adjust your volume, as well as the volume of your hearing aid.
• Do not get discouraged. A person’s hearing will never be perfect, well unless you are Superman!  Even with hearing aids you might still miss words here and there and background noise will be present, but that is normal. Do your best, but if you are feeling like you are struggling more than before, you should go see your hearing health professional and discuss your concerns. A minor adjustment may be all that you need!