My background

I figure a little background is in order before I start this blog. I'm 35 years old, married with two kids and work for a software company. I have worn hearing aids for 8 years, but probably started a year later than I should have. My hearing loss is hereditary, but I'm sure it was accelerated due to my frequent concert attendance and listening to lots of loud music as a kid. I met with several audiologists before selecting the one I ended up using. I'm a major technology and gadget nerd, so I wanted an audiologist that was really into the leading edge products.

I was initially fitted with the Sonic Innovations Natura 2 SE. These were CIC's, (Completely In the Canal) as my loss wasn't too bad a the time and I was a little self-conscious about looks. I adapted pretty quickly and made adjustments nearly every week for months until they worked really well for me. The noise canceling was pretty good for what was on the market, but the occlusion, (that plugged up feeling) was pretty bad. Eating, walking, brushing your teeth, the sound of your own voice were all very difficult to get used to. I didn't hold a conversation while chewing for years.

After about four years, my hearing had declined significantly and was still dropping fast and the little CIC's just weren't able to keep up without getting really sensitive to feedback. I needed the power of a BTE, (Behind The Ear) size hearing aid. They had started producing the BTE's, in different colors, so I decided to show them off if I couldn't hide them. My short hair cut made it pretty obvious and I wasn't going to grow it out.

I was fitted with the Phonak Perseo 211s in silver. These made a huge adjustment in sound quality and amplification for me. Noise canceling was a little better and the occlusion was substantially less. My only complaints about the Perseo were that when I was around louder sounds like music, they would often seem to "cut" and chop the sounds off leaving kind of a static sound. It was like they couldn't handle the volume and didn't know what to do with it. The automatic program switching was also pretty dramatic. As sounds around you changed, it seemed to make huge swings in adjustments which seemed to force me to manually override quite often.

I also tried out the FM system with the Perseos including the Phonak TelCom and the Phonak SmartLink. I'll provide another post later on my experience with FM, but the short story is that the TelCom was great and the SmarkLink was awful.

A year after the Perseo switch, the Phonak Savia was released. I moved into a pair of silver Savia 211's with FM the day they could be ordered and had to be the first in the state with them. These were a huge improvement over the Perseos. Their noise cancelling is amazing in my opinion. It works fast, but isn't too noticeable and still does a great job amplifying people's voices in noisy situations. I don't think I had to manually override the AutoPilot more than a few times per year.

My biggest issue with the BTE's was sweat. I found that many of my activities produced enough sweat to seal off a microphone in just a few minutes, (and I'm not a heavy sweater!). It seemed like I'd go out and toss the ball around with my kids and get a few beads of sweat and I was risking loosing sound for a day while they dried out.

I tried The Hearing Aid Sweatband, (which looks like I'm wearing something my Grandma knitted for me). It just couldn't keep up, so I ended up taking them out during any physical activity. I recently found Ear Gear, which is more of a neoprene style which looks and works much better but still can't keep up during sports or other vigorous activities.

So, I've been on the hunt, looking for a hearing aid that can deal with sweat, water, rain, snow, dust, etc. without leaving me high and dry.