Last weekend I bought new hearing aids. Well, I bought them weeks ago, but I had to wait for this past weekend for them to arrive. This is my third pair. I started wearing them eight years ago, and each pair died in exactly four years. Since 2017, I’ve dropped six thousand dollars trying to hear the people around me speak.
As an added annoyance, I buy my hearing aids from Costco. It’s a fifty-minute drive from my house, and I need to purchase a special annual membership to even enter the building. I typically go on the weekend. Every visit, it’s a sea of oversized SUVs jockeying for parking spaces or just trying to get the hell out of the massive traffic jam of a parking lot. It’s a hassle, but each time I buy new hearing aids, Consumer Reports ranks Costco’s models as the best, the cheapest, with the best customer service. In contrast, my father’s last pair, bought from the boutique hearing center Miracle Ear, cost over seven thousand dollars.
It’s been four years since I bought a Costco membership.
Sales lady: “You can buy a Gold Membership for sixty-five dollars, or you can buy a Platinum Membership for one-hundred thirty-five dollars.
Me: “I’ll buy the Gold.”
“Wait, with the Platinum Membership, you get two-percent cash back on purchases up to twenty-five-hundred dollars. Since you’re buying a big-ticket item, you’ll actually save money with the Platinum.”
I pulled out my phone and punched numbers into the calculator app. “Two percent of twenty-five-hundred is fifty dollars. I’ll still lose money.” The sales lady gave me a smile that seemed to say Thank you for figuring that out, I feel horrible about ripping off people all day, all week, all year.
The woman who fitted my hearing aids warned me that they would take a few weeks to get used to. She got that right. It’s so much easier now to hear and distinguish voices, but where my hearing aids really excel is picking up clatter.
Clatter (n): a continuous rattling sound as of hard objects falling or striking each other.
When I was a teenager, I frequently came home from my nighttime restaurant job stoned. My parents slept lightly, and some nights, they got out of bed to check on me as I settled down for a snack and some late-night TV. I had to hold it together for those few minutes of conversation so they wouldn’t figure out I was high. I quickly learned it was best not to wake them. I crept around the kitchen, silently fixing my snack, every tiny noise—the microwave closing, the metal ice cream scoop set into the sink—sounded like a bomb exploding.
My new hearing aids remind me of this. In the morning, as I make my lunch before heading off to work, I grab a bag of pretzel sticks from the pantry and wrestle to open the bag for the first time. The stiff plastic, designed to tear all the way down the side of the bag and spill out half the pretzels at some point before I finish eating the contents, crackles so loudly (in my hearing aids) you would think I had a clothes dryer in my kitchen spinning a case of broken beer bottles.
When I fetch a scoopful of ice from my freezer and dump it into my water glass, I’m reminded of the Coca Cola commercial that plays at one-hundred decibels through the Dolby Surround Sound® system at my movie theater. The cat chomping his kibble, water running in the sink, the creaks and snaps of hardwood floors, the air escaping a fresh bottle of club soda, each of these causes such a racket that I wince. The volume of these sounds is almost comical, like something you’d see in a campy horror movie where the teenagers need to keep quiet to save their own lives.
I’m supposed to get used to this over the next couple of weeks. My brain will somehow quiet these sounds so they aren’t so prominent, so painful to my ears. While I want to say that’s impossible to believe, I remember visiting Susan’s grandparents when we first started dating. I woke up five times each night with passing trains. Nothing is so clatter-some as train wheels on train tracks at three in the morning. I commented to her grandmother that she must be exhausted all the time from interrupted sleep. She said, “Oh, I don’t hear those trains anymore. I haven’t heard them for years.”
Maybe we all ‘hear’ this clatter all the time, but our brains have learned to selectively adjust the volume to make it less disruptive. Maybe as an intoxicated teen, I heard those sounds at their actual level because I gave them my full attention (and because I was paranoid and high). Now, my hearing aids include all sorts of phone-app activated settings to filter out background noise. I suppose this would be a simple short-term solution, but my brain won’t learn anything that way. I’ll endure the clatter until it magically goes away.
~ ~ ~
A Bonus Post?
A couple days ago, I stressed about not blogging in over two weeks. Awake at two a.m., after banishing my cat from my bedroom before he started his wee-hours-of-the-morning routine of poking my elbow with a claw and then hiding under the bed, I conjured this potential mini blog post, thinking it was funny, thinking I was clever.
English is Weird:
My feed’s gone stale, my blog seems dead,
so here’s a verse for you to read.
I thought I touched a universal nerve about homophones requiring context to pronounce the words correctly, and what happens when dual contexts conflict? The next day, I realized how stupid this was. I wrote it down but kept it to myself. Until now.
The Other Stuff 
A friend of ours bought Costco hearing aids last year for around A$2-3k. He’s said nothing about them, so I guess they’re working for him. It seems there’s much more competition at the lower end of the market these days; a product called pocket aids caught my eye (ear?) recently – under A$1k for two, programmable at home. M says I should think about it 😁.
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A friend of ours bought Costco hearing aids last year for around A$2-3k. He’s said nothing about them, so I guess they’re working for him. It seems there’s much more competition at the lower end of the market these days; a product called pocket aids caught my eye (ear?) recently – under A$1k for two, programmable at home. M says I should think about it 😁.
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In the states, congress recently passed a law allowing manufacturers to sell over the counter hearing aids without testing by a certified hearing specialist. I think that’s why there is a sudden influx of hearing aids priced well under $1000. According to consumer reports magazine, they don’t work as well as the ‘prescription’ hearing aids, but they might be all you need. My recent test is the first time I clocked in at “Severe” loss. Not so great as I hope to last another 30 years or so.
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So far, I’ve been able to dodge the need for hearing aids. But I still feel your pain. I got my latest incarnation of blended bifocals recently. This time it took a solid two weeks for my brain to adjust.
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What’s really amazing is our brain DOES adjust. I spent years reading lips as an aid without knowing I did that. It became clear when we all masked up for covid. Fortunately, I’ve never had trouble with my bifocals.
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That clatter – annoying. Probably enough to put a lot of people off using their hearing aids, or at least using them properly.
Clatter has always been a bit painful for me. Unfortunately, I might be in line for Hearing aids soon, judging by the number of times I miss the doorbell.
~~~
The little poem – not annoying.
Cheers
DD
PS: For truly annoying oblique poems, refer to my blog
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I’m sure the point of my poem would be completely lost without the intro. I probably should have posted it to see if anyone understood why I tagged it humor. Yes, I know a few people who took back their hearing aids after a couple of days and never tried again.
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congrats on your new hearing aids. I’m on set 4, all from Costco. They work well and the price is excellent! One thing I’ve found is that with the programmability of the new aids, they may be able to reduce the clatter frequency. I found paper rattling very hard to take, and they were able to reduce the input at that level. Good luck.
And yes, you can get used to a lot of background noise. A friend of mine who is a massage therapist tells the story of a couple she worked with who lived near the train tracks. Her massage office was also by the tracks, and if a train went by during one of their massages, the person would automatically fall asleep on the table–lying down, train–go to sleep!
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As the days pass, it’s slowly getting better. I’m returning to costco on Sunday for my 2 week adjustment so I’m hoping for more improvement. I’m still wearing my old hearing aids for spin class and I can’t believe how much better the new ones are. It’s definitely taking me longer to get used to them this time.
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Hearing clatter all of the time would drive me crazy. Fortunately, I have always been able to tune things out when I really needed to focus on something. A bomb could go off when I get into this type of zone. Anyhow, I hope your brain learns to filter out the clatter soon.
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The clatter may very well be driving me crazy. I’ve been having a hard time with Tourette for the past couple of weeks and Susan thinks it’s related. Hard getting old.
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I’m going to keep annoying people with my hearing loss 😂 Even with Costco, I can’t afford hearing aids.
I noticed more trouble understanding people when they’re masked too. I was actually taught to read lips in first or second grade, but didn’t realize how much I depended on it. A common phrase around my house is “Hold on. I can’t hear you, let me put my glasses on.”
I like your poem. I’m a certified word nerd.
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I’m sorry that you need and can’t get hearing aids. Have you looked at the drugstore over the counter models? They are supposed to work reasonably well for a fraction of the price. I’m a certified word nerd too. Are you playing the NYT Connections game? I’m absolutely crushing it recently.
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I haven’t checked the OTC hearing aids. I have permanent damage from infancy, and who knows what concerts and age have done to the rest. I’d need to get tested again to even have an idea of what I’d need.
I haven’t looked at NYT in a long time. I canceled all of my subscriptions when Daughter wasn’t working. I stay away from most media these days. I occasionally scan headlines, or some stories, but my blood pressure is high enough without the latest crisis. 😂
When I was still working my coworkers and I used to photocopy the daily crossword in the paper, and have a competition to see who could finish first.
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This was my absolute favorite paragraph:
My new hearing aids remind me of this. In the morning, as I make my lunch before heading off to work, I grab a bag of pretzel sticks from the pantry and wrestle to open the bag for the first time. The stiff plastic, designed to tear all the way down the side of the bag and spill out half the pretzels at some point before I finish eating the contents, crackles so loudly (in my hearing aids) you would think I had a clothes dryer in my kitchen spinning a case of broken beer bottles.
But the story as a whole was a winner! So kudos, despite the aggravation of hearing way too well, it was a worthy read!
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That was my favorite paragraph too. It’s so rare when anyone ever comments on the writing. I very much appreciate that.
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On clatter… it’s kinda funny there are whole channels on YouTube dedicated to ASMR, sounds of eating, scratching, creating usually artwork, and rain or whatever other weather sounds there are. The noise seems to settle people enough that these channels have millions of views. And I think these accounts turn a pretty penny too.
I often think about trying to replicate the noise in my mind I live with as a means of helping others understand what it’s like sometimes. But I have no idea how or where to even begin… I think it would be interesting. People living with schizophrenia are all different with their experiences but I’m willing to bet the constant background noise from auditory hallucinations is the same.
On the poem.. the poet in me wanted to correct read to read to have it rhyme with the line before it. 😂 Did you read those words ik different ways? 😆
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Yes I did read those words differently. I think it would be pretty interesting if we could experience each other’s brain noise. People with anxiety, OCD, schizophrenia, etc would probably get a lot of respect for what they deal with. When my OCD was bad, my mind was like a solar system with the planets spinning a bazillion MPH.
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