Life Update!

About a few months ago, I lost my hearing aids. Because of this, I have had a lot harder of a time in class and have struggled to hear even more than usual. My parents were extremely upset that they were lost because they cost $3,000 each. My family's insurance covers my hearing aid costs, but only every 4 years. What this means is that I am only allowed to get new hearing aids every 4 years, otherwise my parents have to pay the full amount. Luckily for me, 4 years would have been January of 2017 so therefore, I was eligible to receive new hearings aids this January. Both Widex and Phonak, two top hearing aid manufacturers, just came out with a newly designed hearing aid and now I am in the process of trying them both out. Originally, hearing aid technology could only go so far. The technology of hearing aids was not advanced enough to let your brain decide that was important to hear and what was not important to hear. Hearing aids focused on whatever was directly in front of you, using a directional microphone, and deemed any other noise as background noise, focusing the microphone away from those noises. This was very problematic. In the real world, everyone speaking to you won't be directly in front of your face, and sometimes in classroom settings and meetings, teachers or speakers walk around the room and therefore are not in front of the hearing impaired student at all times. While hearing aid companies recognized this as a problem, the technologies available to them were not able to fix this issue. These new hearing aids, however, have the latest technology and have fixed the problem that hearing aids were facing. This new technology has a 360 degree microphone allowing the hearing aid to pick up all sounds and send them to the brain to be processed. This is revolutionary because up until this point, a little machine inside the hearing aid was deciding what was important and should be focused on, not the people themselves. The new microphone technology allows this and now instead of feeling isolated and forced to listen to only what is in front of me, I get to choose what I feel is worth listening to and my brain gets to perform activities it has never done before. Right now, I am wearing the Phonak hearing aids and in the next few weeks I will be switching to Widex hearing aids to compare the two. Stay tuned for more information regarding the new hearing aids and I am very excited to continue sharing my comparisons and new experiences with the new technology!