I’ve been wearing hearing aids, day in and day out, since I was about two. I still remember my mum putting them on, and how I hated the feel of them in my ears at first.
My hatred was such that I put them down the toilet. Only mum’s quick reactions, quite a lot of disinfectant and being put on a radiator to dry saved them.
Now, about 33 years later, my ears feel empty (and chilly) when I don’t wear them. They’ve been my constant companion, for better or worse, through everything that’s ever happened to me.
I love them, in a way. But I also find them annoying. Here’s how…
1.When they whistle
Hearing aids often whistle, and not because they’ve seen another attractive hearing aid they’d like to mate with (unlike say, builders).
What happens is that sound escapes from our earmolds, feeding back into the same microphone that is picking up the sounds around us, creating a feedback loop, resulting in a PIERCING WHISTLE which sounds a bit like the noise a bus makes when it brakes.
It can happen at any time.
Which is why, mid-conversation, I can find myself suddenly resisting the urge to make a face like this one:
2. The wax
Earwax is a pretty grim thing, overall. So please bear with me, I’ll get this part over with as fast as I can.
Putting a piece of silicon in your ear every day is probably not the most natural thing to do. I don’t think our ears thank us for it.
Earmolds reduce airflow and increase the chances of getting an ear infection. They also mean that we tend to build up wax. Which isn’t nice.
As disgusting as wax is, I think us Deafies have become used to wax, desensitised to it. We blow it out of the tubes in our hearing aids when they’re blocked without a second thought. We sniff it. Some (not me) have even been know to (ugh) taste it.
When it does build up to mamouth levels, there’s something hugely liberating about getting rid of it once and for all.
Which might be why this article on the joy of having my ears syringed remains one of the most popular articles on this site.
3. The background noise
Hearing aids just aren’t like ‘normal’ hearing (whatever that is).
They tend to amplify everything, diminishing the ability to pick sounds (and more importantly, voices) out, which non-deaf people seem to be able to do with ease.
This makes noisy environments not only hard to communicate in, but also, really really LOUD AND CHAOTIC. Which makes your brain feel like exploding.
This is the thing that annoys me the most. So I’m sorry this bit isn’t funnier, but this bit doesn’t feel all that jovial to me.
4. The way they look
I’m proud to wear my hearing aids. BUT…
NHS hearing aids tend to come in beige. Lately, they are often also found in silver or brown. Rarely, they’re available in other colours.
Meaning us deaf folk often look a few years behind, fashion-wise.
Which is why some deaf people have started decorating them – or as they like to say, ‘pimping them.’ (Which doesn’t mean they’re selling their hearing aids for set periods of time for the, ahem, gratification of others. It means they’re decorating them. Just so you know.)
Like the ones below:
5. When batteries run out
Hearing aid batteries always run out at the worst possible time.
For me, it was during a weekend away with hearing friends. Worst of all, not just one, but both of them ran out within just a few hours of one another.
Which made a hard situation, communication-wise, even harder.
Although this did lead to me doing two things to reduce the risk of this happening again.
Firstly – I now remember (more often at least) to take fresh batteries with me everywhere.
Second, I change the batteries a few days apart, so there’s less risk of them running out simultaneously.
6. When they get wet
I’ve already mentioned how I put my hearing aids down the loo when I was two. But there’s more.
I’ve got in the shower wearing them. That wasn’t so bad, because I quickly jumped out again, minimising the damage.
Worse was the time I jumped in a swimming pool while wearing them.
Miraculously, they dried and survived.
After making some really weird noises underwater.
7. When a dog eats them
I now have a seven month old puppy, who luckily hasn’t gone near my hearing aids (so far).
But I was traumatised for life nearly ten years ago when my sister in law’s dog Scruffy decided to make pedigree chum out of my plastic pals.
Here’s a pic of Scruffy eating them (yes, being a journalist I took a photo of it before I removed them. It was the professional thing to do).
And here’s the article for BBC Ouch I wrote about it.
8. When they get hit during sport
Just the thought of this one makes me grimace.
Because it’s so painful.
I still remember icy winter mornings when I was warming up to play football for my local team, as a kid. When out of the blue, a huge great big football, whacked by a teammate, would smack against the side of my head.
Hitting my hearing aid a millisecond before it hit the rest of my head. Concentrating the full pressure of the ball into that small area of plastic behind my ear.
Pinching the life out of my ear.
Making my skull ache.
Sending me run into my mother’s arms, crying, in front of all my friends.
Which is painful, and worse, far from cool.
9. Losing them
I don’t lose my hearing aids much nowadays, but when I do, they really really get lost.
And all it takes to lose them is putting them somewhere unfamiliar. Somewhere I don’t usually leave them.
It might be a drawer.
It might be on a windowsill, just out of sight behind a curtain.
It might be in the pocket of a rucksack.
But nothing, nothing at all, can happen until they are found.
10. When they change
This is something deaf people struggle with most of all. Changing hearing aids.
What people don’t realise is that each time you change to a new type of hearing aids, your brain has to learn to make sense of the new sound all over again.
I still feel my current pair aren’t as good as the pair I wore for about five years, but wasn’t supported in the area I moved to four years ago (so the NHS couldn’t repair them).
And many deaf people still say they wish they could go back to their old analogue (rather than digital) hearing aids, which they spent most of their lives wearing before being told there was a ‘better’ option.
For me, changing from analogue to digital meant three months of pain, during which my work and my mood suffered greatly, before things started to make any kind of sense again.
If you want to know more, read Karen Stockton’s great article about it.
What annoys you about your hearing aids? Tell us below.
Charlie is the editor of Limping Chicken, as well as being an award-winning filmmaker. He directed the comedies The Kiss and Four Deaf Yorkshiremen go to Blackpool, and three instalments of the documentary series Found. As a journalist, he has written for the Guardian and BBC Online, and he is currently working on a new two-part comedy programme.
Ian Roberts
December 8, 2016
As a hearing aid user myself, I can relate to most of the experience above! (Thankfully never had a pet chewed my hearing aid.) I wore the old body aid with wire to the ear peice when at primary school and there is nothing more painful than when your ear peice gets knocked in your ear by accident and the pain!……
Irene Thomson
December 10, 2016
I know just what Charlie means. I was diagnosed with hearing loss around 3 years ago and (eventually, after much argument) issued with one hearing aid, even though I was told that i had a loss in both ears. I struggled with one, going back several times to try and get another one, only to be told “The hearing in your left ear is too good for a hearing aid”. Eventually, I changed audiology departments when I began an apprenticeship in a hospital outside of my home town. They finally gave me the other hearing aid. Prior to that, though, I experienced a whistling noise – not a slight “chirping” noise, but a whistle that could be heard by someone who was at the opposite side of the room from where I was standing! Finally, one of my hearing aids died and I went back several more times to try to get things right with the replacement. Unable to do so, I visited my local Boots, where I had a thorough hearing test, which showed that the loss in both ears was enough to require hearing aids. I was issued with 2 excellent Phonak venture 90 hearing aids and have never looked back. Private hearing aids are clearly better than NHS ones!
Angela
December 8, 2016
Loud and chaotic background noises:
As a hearing person I once tried my daughters hearing aids. I was outside, in the garden, it was a sunny and quiet moment, at least without the hearing aids. With them I suddenly heard a strange noise: someone was cleaning his gravel path! It was overwhelming loud as if he did it right under my noise. Nobody was talking yet, but I immediately thought: this happens every day all day long: pushy invisible noises. Must be hard work and exhausting for a deaf person!
pennybsl
December 8, 2016
Thanks for the 🙂 heads-up of the joys of living with beige NHS hearing aids!
All of the above article and more are absolutely true – enough to fill a Monty Python-type book with comic illustrations on this endearing yet frustrating subject, worn by at least 3 million peeps in the UK…
samthornesite
December 8, 2016
I’d be up for creating a book about that, with help from others!!
Tim Hill
December 8, 2016
You’ve put into words what I go through. Hearing people have no idea. The worst bit is the wax and the sometimes resulting infections.
Meg Amor
December 8, 2016
Aloha. Thanks, that was really interesting. I honestly take my hats off to my deaf friends. I’m sure I’d end up putting them on a bread board one day and pounding them into dust with a hammer. I was on a flight not that long ago and it must have just been where I was sitting or my ear buds, but I couldn’t quite make up the words that were being said. I picked up some and some I completely missed or the speaker was too far away. I had to make a wild guess and it sounded like it was being spoken through a muffle. It gave me a slight experience of not being fully hearing. Thank you as always for the excellent articles on here. Aloha Meg 🙂
Eloise
December 8, 2016
Compression annoys me quite a lot. I need high compression settings due to noise sensitivity, but sometimes the compression kicks in at the most random (and often unhelpful) times – like when I drive my car over a cattle grid, or when the notes are given to us on the piano in choir. Cue 30 seconds of compression and static where everything sounds muffled until the hearing aids decide it’s safe to return to the world of sound again!
samthornesite
December 8, 2016
Such a great article and yeah, I can relate to every one of the things on that list! Other things that aggravate me about hearing aids are:
1. “Lovers’ leap” – when an amorous nuzzle against the neck causes feedback that makes said lover clear the ground in shock. Talk about a mood-killer.
2. Pillow deafness: long chats in bed aren’t practical for hearing-aid wearers. You have to turn one aid off if you’re going to lie facing your partner, muttering sweet nothings after doing the flat fandango. Lipreading and trying to half-hear with one aid is rather stressful. I can’t help feeling like this is a cosy part of hearing life that I’m severely missing out on.
3. Life in da hood: Feedback issues again! I can’t wear hoods. Not hoodie hoods, nor anorak hoods. They make my hearing aids scream like banshees with migraines. So when my son has Sunday morning footie training in the sheeting rain, I end up with a numb arm and cold shoulder from holding up a brolly for two hours.
4: Hard-hat hell: Using a chainsaw to strim trees means having to wear the chainsaw hat, which I can’t use with my hearing aids. I’ve had to teach my parents some elaborate signs for ‘timber’ and ‘run away, run away!’ to sidestep the communications gap.
5: Accidentally-airborne aids: as well as the extreme pain of the aid getting hit, there’s also the danger of it jerking loose. I still remember one nightmarish New Year’s Eve party when the aid got bashed from my ear by someone getting over-exuberant during ‘YMCA’. It took six people and eight iphone torches to help me find the damn thing!!
Ed Shovelton
December 8, 2016
Wind noise! Having worn NHS aids for the last 30 years I (like you) have seen the change in technology and how features have developed. But the electronic muffle / whine that you get in windy environments is still there and still a major annoyance.
Al
December 8, 2016
False promise that hearing aids imply you will hear better when you put them on, like eyeglasses, and then they don’t. They also always work best when there is no sound at all. Never an upgrade option and WAY TOO EXPENSIVE !!
jayne
December 8, 2016
My hearing aid is digital. I love it, being able to hear in stereo at long last is wonderful. I have a grey aid, which suits my grey hair. Not many people realise I have an aid. It plays a tune when the batteries need changing. I am lost without it. I love the loop system for cinemas and theatres .
Carol Manthorp
December 11, 2016
Hi Jayne, I also wear 2 hearing aids have them for soo many years please explain to me what is a digital hearing aid and also what exactly is the loop system.
Miguel Melendez
December 8, 2016
I’m a newby at this, just getting my hearing aid this spring. I could relate with most of the things listed and agree that the most annoying is amplification of background noise. However, most startling is when I hear a voice from nowhere saying “battery low”. Thanks for sharing and thanks to others that replied.
Irene Thomson
December 10, 2016
Why do you have to cope with being startled by the disembodied voice telling you that your batteries need changing? My HAs play a brief tune to let me know. So much more pleasant than hearing what you hear!
Barakta
December 8, 2016
I have a BAHA which avoids earmoulds (which are revolting) but is designed to PING out of my head to avoid skull damage which is annoying as people hugging me in greeting or adding/removing a jumper are common times for this to happen.
Cos my BAHA is so powerful (relying on digital feedback suppression) I have to avoid things like the microwave beeping, people whistling and some kinds of singing (opera for example) which cause it to feedback horribly. The bus squeal noise is a good comparator, cos someone else’s hearing aid squeal is less loud than inside the user’s head. Fortunately I can set off the feedback by whistling myself so can insist whistly humans can come and listen for themselves…
I hate changing hearing aids; in the past I hated even between the same model as analogue BAHAs were so different. The digital ones are more consistent. Changing model is hell, I hate it and avoid it wherever possible. Audiologists think I’m a right fussy git, although the good ones realise that it’s horrible as a hearing aid user to have someone else in control of what you hear.
Janice
December 8, 2016
I didn’t grow up with hearing aids but I should have. I wasn’t diagnosed with hearing loss till I was in my 20’s. It did take a lot of getting used to the aids. I upgraded twice, then they went to digital. I was talked into a behind the ear pair and I’ve regretted it ever since. All it did was make things louder, not clearer. And they make my ears ache. I’ve gotten sores behind the ears from them.
Yes, they whistle a lot because I have long hair. And background noise? I go into someplace loud and if I don’t turn my filters on, I won’t be able to hear anyone talk. And sometimes I still can’t hear anyone talk. I have one friend that knows to get close and talk right into my hearing aids, not my ear. I want my old in the ear aids back. Technology isn’t always the greatest. My dad now has a pair that you control with your smart phone. He says he can’t hear any different with these than with the pair before them.
jillmusser99Jill
December 8, 2016
“The way they look” can be improved. There is a dye kit called VANISH that you can buy to dye the tubes/wires to blend with your skin tone. Google it. Makes those tubes blend with your skin tone perfectly.
Alice Pearce
December 8, 2016
Hi there I wear hearing aids in both ears as I was born with a moderate hearing loss. I can totally relate to the change from analogue to Digital, it did take a couple of months for my hearing to adjust to the different tones and sounds. All the above is so true and couldn’t put it into better words.
Lately I think my hearing has slightly toned down which is annoying and makes me feel quite sad at times:(
But what can we do, we are only human, hey…
Sister Marika Rebicsek
December 10, 2016
Brought back some great memories! Can’t use hearing aids now, due to problems of tone decay, 20 mins after switching them on, my hearing fades and am left only with explosive tinnitus :'( I’d give anything to be able to use one but that’s it. My immune system didn’t like the cochlear implant so that had to be removed too.
hbdunsterville
December 11, 2016
Wearing them with glasses when you only have little ears!
When hugs mean the hugger accidentally pushes your aid right into your ear, yowp that hurts.
Loops aren’t always switched on…
Turning up the volume to try and hear better in certain environments (large meeting rooms where no-one is using a mike) and ending up with distortion and feedback… Grr…!
BUT finally people seem to be accepting of my deafness. Before, if I said I was deaf or hard of hearing I’d get all the usual stupid comments. Now people seem to be respectful of it. A blind friend of mine said the same when she got a guide dog, like now it was legitimising her blindness.
Vera Abbott
December 11, 2016
Thank you for the informative, amusing article. I can relate to a great deal of. I only wear one, a Phonak. Wearing a beige colored hearing aid doesn’t faze me in the least. As long as the hearing aid works, I’m happy. The only thing that’s been bothering me lately is that my “rain, wind, weather resistant” hearing aid does not take to cold weather lately. The sound seems to disappear, and I can barely hear any thing. I can’t get it replaced if it’s still working “relatively well”, and of course due to a shortage of audiologists, (government cut back) our local provincial hearing aid supplier “can’t” get me a hearing test for a year. 🙁
deafgirlhan
December 13, 2016
This is so so relatable. Another pet peeve of mine is when the tubing eventually works it’s way out of the earmould, so whenever you go to take your hearing aid out, the tube and the microphone comes out but the earmould is left stuck in your ear!! Ive just started up a new blog on WordPress and I would really appreciate people to read and look at what ive written! Feel free to leave any feedback and comments! http://deafgirlhan.wordpress.com
Linda Hinwoid
March 23, 2018
Thank you so much for this article! I have been wearing aids in both ears since mid February after my family complaining for years about my hearing (or lack of). My world used to be peaceful, now it’s so noisy! Yes, the background noise is the most annoying thing about them. I still haven’t got totally used to wearing them😔
Brian G
April 4, 2018
I don’t understand why deaf people let their hearing aids squeek. If it squeeks you have it turned up too high, turn it down before it makes you even more deaf.
Editor
April 5, 2018
It can happen at any time though – I wouldn’t want to turn them down as then I wouldn’t hear things!