At the age of 27 I was told that I had high frequency loss to my hearing in both ears. Having tried standard (NHS) hearing aids in the past and finding things worse with them than without I gave up using them for many years.

However, just before my 57th birthday last year I decided to give digital a try.

At first I trialed the "in the ear" ones but found that they occluded my ears and made everything sound like the inside of a bucket. I also found that this occlusion caused me to feel every footstep up through my body and into my hearing - after a short time of wearing these I started to feel very irritable.

Eventually my audiologist said that I should try what he thought would be the best thing from the start (but I had the vanity thing of using invisibles ones). Behind the ear, digitals with open ear moulds. The open ear pieces let you hear what you can hear anyway and the hearing aid is computer programmed to fill in the missing frequencies.

My left ear is worse than my right so that aid has to fill in more missing stuff.

It isn't normal hearing but it is a big improvement. I've been wearing them in sessions for around 6 months now and it is amazing what I can now hear.

The cost is prohibitive for many and they are not yet widely available on the NHS (UK readers only). Mine cost me around £2700 for the pair and the batteries need changing about every two weeks.


I used the Boots Hearingcare service in Hull and I can only praise the audiologist there who didn't try to sell me anything, saw me every week or so until I was happy with things and keeps following up to see if averything i still OK.

roger