Excited for Next Week

Next week, on Wednesday, I am getting my new hearing aids, and I am very excited. I am trying to prepare myself, and in my reading have gotten some very good tips. The most important one is kind of discouraging, and that is to start out using them for an hour at a time, in quiet environments only. So much for my thoughts of wearing them home and hearing what people talk about on the bus-in reality the bus is going to be much too loud for me. The part that is really discouraging is the fact that the longer one has been hearing impaired without using aids, the longer it takes for them to adjust. I have been hearing impaired my entire life-I am twenty-nine-and have not worn hearing aids in about twenty years. So, realistically, it may take me up to a year to get fully adjusted. I plan to get books on cd from the library to practice my listening skills. I look forward to the day that I can watch a movie without captions and still understand what is being said, not to mention being able to have conversations without straining to understand, while still missing things. My main goals with these hearing aids is to comprehend speech. Environmental sounds are also important, but for the time being I have Tetra to alert me to those. I am thinking of the time I was in the library at college working on a computer. I heard an announcement over the intercom, but was unable to understand what was said. Ten minutes later I was tapped on the shoulder and asked-Are you almost done, we have been waiting for you to finish...the announcement was to finish up because the library was closing. I pointed to Tetra and said, I am sorry she cannot interpret English. We had a nice laugh over it, but it shows how much I need these hearing aids.