Day 34 - Lots of dirt and lots of water

With the 30-day trial at the end, I'm going to get one last big event posted before I give my final summary. My audiologist called this morning, right on schedule and scheduled my follow-up for Wednesday afternoon. Guess it's time to make my decision.

I spent the last week at Scout camp which was filled with mountain biking, water skiing, swimming, cave exploration, etc. I had plenty of dirt, sweat, campfire smoke and water to go around during my week. After about 3 days of pretty solid trail riding in the dust, I noticed that the volume of my Lyrics wasn't quite what it used to be. I attribute it to just tons of gunk on the microphones, but I'm not familiar enough with the technical construction of the devices to say for sure. After struggling with a few conversations one evening, I decided to bump them up to volume level 5 over the 4 I was used to. This made a huge difference and really brought my hearing back to the level I was used to. This level drove me crazy when I left the audiologist originally, but seemed perfect now. I really think it must be compensating for some of the crud on the microphones that must have built up. I guess I'll know for sure when I get my first replacement set.

One other note, I ended up sleeping with the Lyrics turned on during my week at camp. It was reassuring to hear the sounds going on at night or to hear if the boys were up to their usual mischief. This is certainly one big benefit of the Lyrics. It was really neat to wake up to the sounds of the outdoors in the mornings.

Day 1

The ride home from the clinic in my truck seemed really noisy. I thought I was hearing static and the music from my stereo sounded awful. I’m worried that driving will again be a challenge. The Savia’s I have now do a great job canceling out the road noise, so it will be hard to go back to listening to that again.

I played around with the settings a little and found that having the volume at a 4 instead of a 5 sounds much better. There is less noise in the car and it still seems like I can hear fine.

I got home and showed them off to the family. It took my wife a minute of looking into my ear before she could finally see them. They’re impossible to notice unless you’re tugging and looking up into my ear. The kids were playing in the pool and I sat and watched the kids playing and noticed that I could hear them talking to each other very clearly. Despite the background noise of the kids and the A/C unit, I was able to carry on a conversation just fine with my wife and neighbor without even looking at their faces to read lips. Typically that has been a difficult situation hearing-wise.

The occlusion is pretty annoying. I feel really plugged up at this point and the sound of my own voice is pretty different. This will certainly take some getting used to.

I’m anxious to try these out sleeping. I’ve been warned that users often are sore in the morning from sleeping on their side. I’m going to try to force myself to sleep on my back until I get used to them. As I head to bed, I haven’t noticed any pain or unusual presser in my ears yet and I hope it stays that way.