Hello everyone. So this morning, I went to my local hospital to collect my hearing aid. I have some mild hearing loss so I’m trying a behind - the- ear model for my right ear, and will see how it goes. I had a very satisfactory fitting with a nice audiologist, and have come home and spent the past 90 minutes fiddling around with it. I am wearing it now.
The thing is, it has reminded me that I suffer from numb fingertips - ie. I don’t really have full feeling in them. I’ve had this for years and have never quite been able to feel my pulse (but I’m still alive!) and I have some problems with manual dexterity (think this is a ‘fine motor skills’ sort of thing). Also my hands can occasionally feel cold when the rest of me isn’t. I hadn’t thought very much about this before, but feeling around on top of the hearing aid (whilst actually wearing it) to adjust the volume and change the programme is rather tricky. I shall keep practicing with it and I will have a review with the Audiology Department in six weeks, but I’m now wondering if I should have asked for another kind of hearing aid. It’s a bit like the numbness in the feet which I always have to some degree.
Feeling a bit annoyed with myself…has anyone else had this?
Oh crumbs, yes. I can’t do anything fiddly like that at all. You should have seen my late mother and me trying between us to change the batteries on her hearing-aids. What a performance! She had no sensation in her fingertips either because she had other stuff the matter and was also very old, so doing any more with the hearing aid than getting it into her ear was out of the question. I think it is a very common problem, because hearing aid users are more likely than the average to be struggling with other difficulties too. As I often say - having MS is like getting old - a bit early!
Good luck with new aid. I hope that your fingers will learn better with practice what to do.
Thanks for the replies Carole and Alison. Funnily enough my fingers are feeling quite a bit better today and have been wearing the hearing aid all day. I just keep thinking that there’s no difference in my hearing and maybe I haven’t got the settings right. This morning I was speaking to someone who has hearing aids in both ears (also some age related hearing loss) and she reckons that it takes a month to get used to them - get used to being able to hear properly, that is.
Just another thing to get used to then - that and the Tecfidera! Although the Tec hasn’t been too bad tbh - I will be starting my third week of the first month’s supply tomorrow and so far the side effects have been pretty minor. Glad that I am having my first month on the lower dose, though; I was also pleased to see on the FB group that other people have had it prescribed this way as well (slowly) on their consultant’s say so.