Hello, I'm Bruce Yardley and you may remember me from my old test cricket days...
I’m 68 now and have known my hearing wasn’t great for the last 20 years. Like many of us I guess I put off getting hearing aids for as long as I could as I deluded myself that my hearing loss wasn’t as obvious as hearing aids would be. Eventually it got to the point where I just couldn’t hear well enough in crowded places anymore. I either had to do something about my hearing problems or withdraw from anywhere with background noise. Well, withdrawing wasn’t an option – I was still getting invitations to guest speak at special events, often with dinners involved. People would be talking to me around the table and I’d just pretend I’d heard them and act agreeably in response. But of course I had no idea what had been said. It was like the Seinfeld episode where the “low talker” was unintelligible because her voice was too soft, and Jerry unwittingly agreed to something he hadn’t bargained on because he couldn’t hear her properly.
It’s amazing just how being unable to hear properly can have such a detrimental effect on your confidence. I know there’ll be heaps of hard-of-hearing people who identify with this. Then there was the lip-reading that I’d need to do to try to understand what was being said. This meant I failed the eye-contact part of conversations. All told, my hearing loss wasn’t doing me any favours and I knew my hearing needed to be fixed. So I went and got fitted with some cheap hearing aids at a not-so-well-known hearing aid provider and received dubious benefit as I just wasn’t sure whether I was better off with or without the aids in my ears, particularly in company where there was other noise going on. This put me off hearing aids for a while.
But then there were stories in the paper of people who’d been to Brad Hutchinson
Hearing and were doing so much better with their hearing than me. I decided to give Brad a try myself. It is great that Brad’s a cricketer who recognised my name, because we got on well from the outset. I am now wearing fantastic new hearing aids that let me be myself again, enjoying playful banter and putting me back in the thick of life. I really appreciate being able to join in on jokes and have an informed laugh.
Thanks, Brad, for your marvellous intervention that has restored my quality of life. It was great to be welcomed by the team at your place, and I want to add my name to the list of supporters who have been helped by Brad Hutchinson Hearing.
Bruce Yardley.
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