After 35 years of helping people hear with hearing aids I can predict that a person will recover the ability to hear and I can objectively verify that fact with some very sophisticated measuring tools. However, I cannot predict when people will perceive enough benefit to wear them on a regular basis. I never know until the person actually wears the hearing aids and then decides for themselves.
I recently worked with two patients in St. Petersburg. They both had moderate to severe hearing losses that had slowly crept up on them over the past 10 years. That was quite obvious to me during their interview before I tested their hearing. They both were somewhat in denial about the severity of their problems. I predicted that both of them would have a new world of hearing when I fitted them with hearing aids.
SH was an active man struggling to function with hearing loss at home and at church activities. DH was an active woman who was encouraged to hear better by family.
I fitted both of them within two weeks of each other. Both were very distracted with the new world of sound during their first week but SH embraced the changes and by the second week he felt the hearing aids sounded natural and were of great benefit to the quality of his life. DH had a more difficult time adjusting to the changes and ultimately returned the hearing aids after four weeks because she felt the frustration outweighed the benefit.
You will never know how you will do with hearing aids until you try them.
