This has nothing at all to do with ham radio unless you are a ham who has
just learned you have a hearing loss.  That would be me.  I know some hams
on this list are using hearing aids but I thought it might be worth
someone's time to hear, no pun intended, my experience to date in case you 
some day face a similar problem.

I got an sinus infection 3 months ago which settled in my left ear.  You
likely have heard of tinnitus and some describing it has a waterfall,
crickets chirping, and the like?  Mine was Niagara Falls on steroids during
the infection.  Unfortunately, the tinnitus hasn't gone away, although the
infection has, but the tinnitus has, at least, reduced in volume.  The Ear 
Nose and
Throat (ENT) specialist said it could go away on it's own after a few months
but my hearing test showed 50 DB down in my left ear on some frequencies,
and 40 DB down on some frequencies in my right ear; all mostly in high
registers.  My low frequencies are fine, which is good, because I have 
always preferred 250 to 500 Hz when working CW.    So, now the hunt for 
hearing
aids.

This part was easy because a few months ago, my wife discovered she
had lost about half her hearing.  By the time I realized and admitted I 
needed help, too, she
had already gone to various places and settled on the hearing aids which 
both of us are
now sporting, as the Brits say.  I'm part British.  I don't know what
part but I know I'm some part British.  Anyhow, as hams, we are, of course,
more interested in how the hearing aids work and their features, sometimes
the cost, too, but what makes them digital etc.

These are blue tooth compatible, which makes them really cool in several 
ways, but to start, they are called Starkey Halos.  Starkey is a big name in 
all types of manufactured hearing aids but the Halos are quite unique 
because you have to know what to look for just to see them being warn by a 
person.  The microphones and battery are housed in an almond shaped housing. 
Yes, almond as in the nut you can eat.  This compartment sits above your ear 
and behind the top of the ear and nothing hangs down in the back at all.  A 
small gage wire comes out the tip of the almond in front of your ear, snakes 
down your hair line, and a small speaker is at the other end which is about 
the size of a grain of cooked rice, well, maybe a little larger, which hangs 
down inside your ear.  There is another small wire attached to the back of 
the speaker which half coils around inside the inner edge of your ear to 
help keep things in place.  I think the doc said it also is part of the blue 
tooth software antenna.

The digital part is programmed based upon the results of the sound booth 
hearing test you take.  Weak areas, frequencies, are enhanced when heard by 
the hearing aid for each given ear, and normal frequencies are left alone by 
the digital processor.  I had mine for five days and my right ear went dead. 
The software crashed.  No fooling.  The company over nighted it but I was 
given a new set till mine come back in a day or two.

The app you download to use with the hearing aids is very useful.  You can 
turn the microphone on either ear up and down, you can feed any settings 
into either ear different from each other, you can turn your phone into a 
microphone which you give to the people in the front seat so you can hear 
inside your ears what they are saying if the road noise is too loud, you can 
program all such settings and give them menu names from which you can 
choose, or they can be GPS targeted to turn those settings on automatically 
once you arrive at that given location, say, church, work, doctor's office 
etc.  Yes, it plays in stereo.  If you have a lot of background noise at 
work, you can turn things down.  If it is too quiet, crank it up.  If you 
wish, the app software will turn everything externally to off and the only 
thing you can hear is remotely in your ears.  The speakers are so small, 
your ears are not blocked so whatever hearing you may have left, still comes 
through just as it always did.  The battery and microphone compartment 
sitting on and behind the top of your ear is hardly seen, if you have jug 
handle ears as I do, or if you have longer hair, which I don't, or if you 
have Spoc pointed ears, you have it made.  No, you don't notice they are 
there unless you think about it.

I had trouble with NLS audio books not being loud enough so I emailed a 
question about it to the company support email address.  Within a day or two 
a guy answered and told me exactly how to turn the volume up on just the 
books   playing in my ears.  I gave it a menu name of "Read" so now when I 
go to read a book, I open the app, touch "Read" and all those settings snap 
right over to the presets I picked.  When I'm done, I touch "Normal" on the 
menu list and everything goes back to what the normal settings are.  Yes, 
you can use the buttons on the iPhone to turn things up and down but the NLS 
books weren't loud enough, for the most part, so I made the changes so I 
could hear them better.  You can also completely turn the phone beeps and 
clicks and ringing to an off position externally and let everything feed 
through your ears alone.  Good for church when the sermon is boring and you 
want to listen to some Iron Butterfly or ZZ Top surreptitiously.  I'll deny 
I said such a thing if you squeal on me.  Also a nice feature when in an 
office or waiting room and you don't want to let the whole room hear your 
phone.  The iPhone is the only cell phone they make an app for so far and 
according to what I understand, this software just was released about a 
month ago.

Now for the cost or do you want me to skip that part?  I thought you'd want 
to know but you won't like it.  First, you can go to Costco and get 
something similar for 2 grand or a few hundred more.  If you are on Social 
Security and Social Security Advantage, you can get bulky things for about 
500 and digitals for about a thousand dollars.  You won't get the service 
you want for this class so hunt around till you find good insurance coverage 
and a good audiologist that knows what they are doing.  Before I tell you 
the price we paid, my wife and I that is, let me mention you can find places 
that assist in buying, or paying for, the hearing aids.  If you don't go to 
a doctor, or audiologist, who knows how to find funding, you'll end up with 
hearing aids you hate.  Sandy and I are both on Social Security now so we 
could not afford these hearing aids without financial assistance.  We are 
making the payments but they are reachable and doable based upon the 
financing we found.  One place I'll have to ask Sandy for the name but it is 
for hearing aids, dental, and medical type things.  The other is Wells 
Fargo.  They seem to have some type of lower interest loan they can spread 
out over 5 years and those two assistive loans made up the financing for the 
5 grand the hearing aids cost.  You heard me; 5000 dollars.  Just how much 
is your hearing worth to you as a blind person, I asked myself one day, and 
decided it was very important.  Going without them even for a few minutes is 
horribly nerve racking and feels like I'm walking around with a thick pillow 
case over my head.  Putting them on for the first time, it sounded a little 
metallic.  It was like talking into a public address system with the audio 
turned up high on the microphone.  The audio envelope, in such a case, is 
out in front of you and bouncing back to you with a metallic quality.  Well, 
that's what it made me think of at first but now I don't notice that.

Last evening, my wife and I were sitting out on our deck swing and for the 
first time using my hearing aids, I heard a morning dove over a few houses 
away and it sounded perfectly normal.  I also sat under the deck swing 
canopy a couple of days earlier and listened to an approaching thunderstorm. 
It all sounded normal to me.  That's good, too, because I enjoy listening to 
thunder boomers rolling off the mountains.  Yes, I can now hear CW signals 
clear up to 3100 KHz before it passes out of the passband filter.  Side band 
is fine, too.  I still daily practice CW contesting with the Morse Runner 
program and I start, as I have for a very long time, at 40 WPM, and after 
the first 30 contacts or so, I jump to 45 WPM.  The speakers hanging inside 
the ear canal are so small, I can still put ear buds into my ears and hear 
the contest practice program just fine.

An unusual benefit I've discovered is my voice.  Over two years ago, I began 
having vocal cord problems.  My family doctor said one of the cholesterol 
medications I was taking could be the cause so he took me off that one and 
went to a different one reporting not to have that side effect.  Nothing 
changed.  I even quit taking the medication for a month and my voice didn't 
change to the better.  My voice is almost back to normal and the only answer 
is that I can hear my own voice better and my wife agrees about my voice and 
my overall attitude in general.  The ENT doctor told me this hearing loss 
has likely been occurring slowly over 4 or 5 years.  I had noticed some 
hearing loss but since nobody in my family ever had such a problem, I just 
dismissed it until the tinnitus fired up.  You ought to see my wife and I at 
night after our hearing aids are both off and we are going to bed.  We do a 
lot of yelling just to communicate before hitting the hay, haha.  I hope the 
neighbors can't hear us and call the cops.

 Finally, yes, some things sound slightly different but your brain adjusts 
rapidly to the differences and it isn't a problem for very long.  I was 
disappointed at first, thinking I was getting so old and feeble at just 62 
years of age, that I needed hearing aids.  After wearing them for one day, 
wild horses could not pull me away from them now.

Oh, one more thing.  Yes, being digitally software programmed by the doctor 
or audiologist, you can go back in any time to have the hearing aids fine 
tuned.  They often recommend a new hearing test once a year to be sure but 
being based on a software computerize program, they can be fine tuned more 
whenever you think you need it.  This is one big reason why you need to be 
very picky about where you get the hearing aids in the first place.

Phil.
K0NX