On Tuesday I got my new hearing aids! Sorry for the delay in posting, Brad hasn’t been doing well, and is a few photo shoots behind.
Brad, Hestia, and I headed up to Palmetto Family Hearing for my appointment, and while waiting I got some candy from their candy dish! I don’t usually get candy, so I was really excited! Hestia was happy to post in some pictures with me, too.
We went into the room to try my hearing aids on and Brad was so excited that he couldn’t stop snapping photos and moving around. At one point he was so excited about a picture that he bumped into my audiologist, Dr. Dana! Luckily, she didn’t mind at all.
Dr. Dana had to do some tests to measure the insides of my ears, and then put my hearing aids on me for the first time. I had to listen to a short paragraph about carrots over and over again as she got the levels just right. I didn’t mind—I like carrots!
We spent a while going over how my hearing aid worked and teaching me to put it in and take it out. And to change the batteries!
We then connected it to my phone. I can control the settings on my phone, and even take calls through my hearing aids!
Throughout it all, Hestia was a perfect little service dog. She just sat in my lap and looked cute, and occasionally licked me when I started getting anxious. I got a few photos at the end with Dr. Dana!
After the appointment, we got a few photos of Brad. But he forgot his hat! He always wears a hat, so it was very odd to see him in pictures without one!
I’ve had my hearing aids for three days now. It’s been a bit of an adjustment. When you get hearing aids, it takes a few weeks for your brain to start processing the sounds normally. My right hearing aid is a bit too loud, so I have to adjust the volume down every day. This will be fixed when I see Dr. Dana again in a month. They sound a bit tinny and like they are reaching a maximum volume or something, which I think Dr. Dana might be able to help with when I see her again. It’s also really hard to hear and process the “s” sound! I guess I wasn’t hearing that sound, and now my world seems full of it. It is a bit annoying, actually!
And speaking of annoying, Brad’s wheelchair sounds inordinately loud as well, now! But each day has been a little better, and I am getting more and more used to how the world sounds with hearing aids.
I think overall it will be good for me to have them. Brad says I’ve already stopped shouting when I’m on the phone! I think in a week or two, I’ll be well on my way to being inseparable from my hearing aids!
I did already order some things to bling them up, so stay tuned to a future post about that!
In the pictures below (and the few selected ones above), you might notice my psoriasis on my forehead. Brad told me he could edit my psoriasis out of the pictures, but in the end we decided that didn’t feel true to our disability-focused perspective. For beauty shots of me, he might make the psoriasis redness a little bit less noticeable. But for regular shots, he’s going to leave my skin as it is. This psoriasis is potentially part of my arthritis diagnosis. I have either psoriatic or rheumatoid arthritis (or maybe both!), so leaving my psoriasis out of pictures just seems wrong.
I have short curly brown hair and am wearing an off-shoulder blue and purple Bohemian dress. Hestia is a white and black Japanese Chin wearing a purple harness. Brad is wearing black pants, a red shirt, a red and gold vest, and a multicolored scarf.
