Getting hearing checks

Early in the season here at Venture Out, one of our neighbors mentioned that she had gotten a free hearing test at Costco. We made appointments to get our hearing checked, in fact, we had made the appointments on Monday of Thanksgiving week (the lady booking appointments asked me if I was sure I wanted to come in to Costco on that day as it would be filled with the craziness that is Costco! We decided to brave it.). I got my hearing checked that day, but the technician who was to test Carl said that he had too much wax in his right ear so he had to reschedule.

After a trip to the doctor to have his ear cleared out, 

 ...Carl had his appointment a few days ago.

I requested that they print out a copy of my report and when Carl's testing was completed, his technician called me into the testing room to review Carl's report.

The two reports were laid out to print a little differently; my report is on the left, and Carl's is on the right. Carl's results for right and left ear are overlaid onto the same graph; mine has right ear on the right and left ear on the left. The line charts up near the top of the report show the decibel levels at which different frequencies could be heard -- the frequencies are increasing moving left to right, and decibel levels are increasing moving top to bottom. Both of our charts indicated that our hearing capability reduced at higher frequency levels. At the lower frequencies (the vocal range of men's voices), both of us could hear at an acceptable decibel level (20-25dB). As we were tested in higher frequencies, our ability to hear required higher volume (decibel levels).

It may be hard to see, but our results are pretty similar.

However, the technicians approached the results differently. 

My technician indicated that my hearing was degraded, but she did not recommend that I consider hearing aids at this time. She suggested I get my hearing checked again in 1-2 years.

Carl's technician also indicated that his hearing was degraded, but recommended that he consider getting hearing aids at this time. She indicated that the longer you go without having your hearing corrected, your brain gets used to not hearing sounds in a particular range, and can cause you to have permanent impairment in that range. She fitted him with a pair of aids tuned for his hearing loss and sent us out into the Costco warehouse for a few minutes to see how they worked for him. She cautioned him that he would be hearing things that he had not be accustomed to hearing, and it might be disconcerting at first.

Sure enough, he immediately heard squeaking wheels on shopping carts and about jumped out of his skin when a fork lift unexpectedly blew its horn in a nearby aisle. On the positive side, he could hear what I was saying without me needing to speak loudly or get his attention before I spoke.

Carl had thought that hearing aids would cost in the range of several thousand dollars ($5000+). The hearing aids that they have are in the range of $1700-$2000. Regardless, Carl decided that he did not want to get hearing aids at this time.

We are not sure why the recommendations from the two technicians varied. I wish we had had the same technician for both of us; we had to wonder if Carl's technician was more interested in making a sale than doing what was best for the customer. Or maybe my technician had learned that people with a mild-to-moderate hearing loss weren't likely to purchase and she just doesn't go forward to fitting the product for those folks. It could be, because Carl is a little older than I am, that his technician was more concerned that his brain may be getting used to not hearing sounds in specific ranges and he needed the correction to keep his brain active in that range.

At any rate, it was interesting to get tested and to see the results... at least we have a baseline if/when we get tested in the future.