Life Changing Hearing Success!
I’m a farmer from the Carnamah area, exposed to all the noise hazards that go with our occupation. I knew I had a problem of some sort, there was the constant intrusive sound of tinnitus, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what was causing it. I thought that my wife Annie was mumbling, and other people, particularly in social settings, were also hard to understand. Annie, along with our four daughters, weren’t backward in letting me know that I was having trouble hearing and they’d like me to do something about it.
It became obvious that I had spent too many years being very selective in choosing someone to talk to when we went out. In hindsight, I see now that the person would be a tolerant, pretty well always male friend with a deep voice, invariably talking about the same thing every week (golf), so I’d have some idea of the conversation. Annie tells me though that I was forever asking for repeats of what was said, even missing out on the first telling of jokes which patient people would repeat, but we all know that jokes aren’t quite as good the second time around!
Still it took a bit to persuade me, with the crunch coming when my three year old granddaughter tried to converse with me. She’d done as she was told, and tapped me on my shoulder to get my attention. I tried to hear her, looking at her little face while she spoke, but I didn’t understand a word she said. It was so disappointing and this made me realise that I was missing out on these precious years. I now have four grandchildren with sweet little high-pitched voices, speaking in the frequency right out of my hearing range.
What it all boils down to is that the grandkids were the wake-up call I needed to impel me towards looking into my hearing problems. When I met up with my long-term friend who has been successfully wearing hearing aids for a few years, he told me about how pleased he is with Brad’s services. The family wish I’d done this sooner. As soon as Annie and I arrived home from being fitted with hearing aids, the girls saw my demeanour and were astounded at how much more relaxed I appeared. They commented on how much softer my voice was. I was no longer talking over everyone because I wasn’t aware that they were speaking. The new me was a relief for the whole family, in fact life changing for us all. I should have done it sooner.
And just as a footnote, my daughters called me before I left home to go back to see Brad following my two week trial to say: “Don’t wimp out. Buy the hearing aids!”
Ian "Chook" Fowler
