My phone rang on Friday and I nearly jumped out of my skin.
It was the loudest phone ring I have ever heard, very much like having a firehouse bell going off inside your head
After the first ring, I remembered what the doctor had said earlier in the day: “These hearings aids use Bluetooth, so when the phone rings, you’ll hear it through them.”
No kidding.
It was a number that wasn’t in my phonebook, so I didn’t want to answer it, but I couldn’t remember how to turn down the phone volume. It finally quit ringing, thank the saints, and
It finally quit ringing, thank the saints, and I re-acquainted myself with the phone volume controls before it went off again.
Earlier Friday, I had driven to Oklahoma City to get fitted with the hearing aids, which, you may remember, I ordered following a hearing test about six weeks ago.
The test showed that my right ear had pretty typical hearing loss for a guy my age, but the left one was thoroughly shot.
Unaided, I have difficulty understanding voices in that ear and there is a decibel range in which it is almost impossible. Alas, that’s the range where most women’s voices fall. I was in my 20s and working in the newsroom
I was in my 20s and working in the newsroom at the Ada Evening News when I became aware that I could hear telephone calls only through my right ear. It happened pretty quickly, going from two good ears to one in a matter of a couple of weeks.
Turns out, a virus probably had chewed its way through some aurual connections, the doctor said.
Not to worry, I could still hear ok out of my right ear.
Until the last year or two, that is, when I kept hearing crickets at strange times. There were lots of crickets and they were getting louder, which prompted me to set up the hearing test that led to the diagnosis of tinnitus.
Now I have aids in both ears and have been surprised at how many misadventures I have had with them in just a few days.
Walking out of the doctor’s building with aids in my ears for the first time, I reached up to take off my mask and - forgetting that the hearing aids were up there with the mask strings - flipped the aid out and off my left ear. Fortunately, it arced in front of me and I snatched it before it hit the sidewalk.
And a couple of times I have had seriously screechy feedback from one thing or another.
And Tuesday on my way to the office, I had to turn around and go back home because I had forgot to put in the hearing aids.
But the strangest thing is what it has done to my voice. Those around me say I still sound the same, but the voice I hear in my head sounds nowhere near the same.
To me, I am far hoarser, raspier and more nasally than I used to be. Maybe that’s how I’ve always sounded and I was just hearing myelf wrong.
I’ve looked forward to hearing a guitar with my new aids, so on Saturday I pulled out the trusty old D-28 and hit some E chords, which sounded spectacular. Rich and full, crisp and clear, all a guitar ought to be, as the songs says.
And then I tried to sing. I have never been a great singer, but I’ve been able to stay on pitch pretty well.
This sounded like someone else’s voice in my head and it was wandering all over the place in search of the right notes, but not finding many.
So, I can hear better, but, alas, this may be the end of my singing career.