Hearing Aids and hearing loss - Brilliant and not

charlieab11

I received hearing aids in august last year and at  first they were amazing, i could hear birds signing, all sorts of noises I hadn't heard for a long time.  Its a different storey now.
We have a parrot at home who screams when my partner doesn't get her out, the screams hurt my ear when I don't have my aids in, so I know its going to be agony when they are in so I don't wear them at home due to this.  When the parrot gets put to bed, its bliss, no screaming, however we have 2 love birds who chatter away.  Without hearing aids, i can just hear them and its nice, with the aids, its too loud/much for me.
We have 2 kids, one of who has autism and likes to make random high pitched noises which hurt my ear with no aids in, and is way to much when the aids are in.
My partner sometimes just doesn't seem to understand my frustrations with the above no matter how i try to explain them.  She thinks I should wear them all the time, which in a house with no birds or shrieking kid I would.
Its now got the point where I don't wear them at all and its very frustrating and annoying that I'm missing out on sounds.  I don't know what to do.

yanni

@charlieab11

Your hearing aids may have been set too high for high frequency / pitch sounds. Your audiologist should be able to reduce the setting to a more comfortable level.  It may be the aids need lowering just slightly for the shrieks to be loud but bearable.

There is a condition known as recruitment where people with hearing loss find a sound too loud when people with normal hearing do not. So your partner may genuinely not understand how a sound they find tolerable is too loud for you.  That said, I am sorry that they are not more sympathetic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recruitment_(medicine)

It is completely  normal for it to take a few adjustments for sounds to be right for you so don’t worry about asking for an appointment to adjust the hearing aids (although it may take a few months for an appointment if they are NHS aids). I have worn hearing aids for many years and I still go back to the audiologists for adjustments almost every time they have changed the settings after a hearing test.

 With hearing aids it is a fine line between the volume being loud enough to hear speech as clearly as possible whilst not being subjected to uncomfortably loud  noises.  The audiologist needs you to work with them to work out the best balance as two people with the same hearing test results can need quite different settings; what one person finds comfortably loud another can find uncomfortably loud.

There are directional programs available on hearing aids which can reduce background noise and focus on the sounds coming from the front which may help reduce the sound of the birds if they are behind or to the side of you. Depending on how sophisticated your hearing aids are this could be an automatic feature or something you have to select manually by pressing a button on your hearing aid. Ask the audiologist if this is something they can add if you don’t have it.

There are also hearing aids with manual volume control so you can turn the hearing aids down rather than off when the birds are shrieking or there are other loud noises.

I would add that I am very protective of my remaining hearing.  If there is noise that I find uncomfortable either they turn it down or  I go elsewhere. Loud noises damage your hearing whether you have hearing loss or not and it is you that has to cope with living with worsening hearing loss caused by being subjected to loud noises.

Albus_Scope

Heya @charlieab11 and welcome to the community!

I'm sorry to hear you're not having much luck with the hearing aids, I can see Yanni has given you some advice already which may be helpful, but I just wanted to stop in and say hello.