It has been while since I’ve been in, but I’m back now and I have to think about things that I used to do almost automatically. When I sat down to do a hearing test I had to, if only for a second, think about what I needed to do first. When I was preparing paperwork I had to think about where it was stored on the computer, and which of the many government or supplemental insurance forms I needed. All this was automatic for me, before being off work for a month and a half as ordered by my doctor.
Don’t misunderstand, it all came back very quickly, but I had to THINK about them for a second. I had to cognitively concentrate on the task, particularly at the beginning, to get the steam engine in my brain to start rolling. And this was after just slightly more than a month.
Now, let me compare that to people who wait anywhere from 1 to 7 years before they decide to try wearing hearing aids. That’s the statistical average; the average person waits 5 to 7 years after being diagnosed with hearing loss, before finally taking the step of trying hearing aids. Now to be fair, that statistic was around when I started in the industry, but it’s also the most recent statistic I can find. But I will say that if I waited 7 years to get back to work, I may not remember how to do it at all, never mind the all the technological advancements in between!
The truth is that after that length of time, the part of our brain that processes the information from our cochlea and decodes it into something we can understand starts to lose its ability to do its job as well. As I have said in previous articles, this makes our job much more difficult. Recently many of the hearing aid manufacturers have begun adding retraining and auditory rehabilitation programs into their software, or offering it as a separate part of the hearing aid fitting. They are generally designed to be used in office, but a few are designed so that the exercises can be done in the comfort of the client’s home. Most are series of recordings designed to slowly reintegrate the client to the environment we generally live with today; an increasingly noisy world. In an article in the Hearing Journal, author Karen Pallarito defines such programs as “Auditory training aims to retrain the brain and ears much like physical therapy assists hip replacement patients in regaining strength and mobility.” She goes on to say that studies into the plasticity of the brain tissue in everyone, even older people, is capable of such retraining, and yet fewer than 10% of the practitioners really use any such software or therapies. There are several explanations for this; firstly, until recently there was very little published work on how well these retraining therapies really worked. Most of us were under the impression that as we age our brain lost the ability to make new connections and therefore the programs were only useful for younger people. Secondly, they were expensive. A typical retraining therapy used to cost thousands of dollars because it was all done in the office and charged by the hour. Now we can set you up with something you can do either on a computer in the office, or at home. Third was the patience factor. Most patients won’t allow the time to properly rehabilitate themselves into a world of hearing in different environments. They believe that the hearing aid should do all the work, and over time they often can, but retraining can speed that process up significantly.
If you are having trouble getting used to your hearing aids, particularly in noisy environments, you should call and see if an auditory training program would help. It doesn’t work 100% of the time, but studies have shown at least some improvement for 88% of the clients that were asked in a study published in 2011, (Pallarito, 2011).
So as I have found out, there is a need to take things slowly, manage expectations and generally understand that our bodies will be aided in many areas by introducing some form of rehabilitation. For me I have to start by changing a few lifestyle choices and getting more exercise, (this stemming from my recent health battle). I take a lot of inspiration from my patients, many of whom I have seen defy odds and do some incredible things. In fact next week I will be writing about one of them.
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