Miracle Ear

I had my yearly physical and my doc noticed I was having a difficult time hearing him. plus my family kept requesting that I turn my T. V, down. I was holding my hand behind my right ear to hear and had difficulty in noisy restaurants, hewing the person seated next to me!
It appeared that 35 years as a tech at Ma Bell had killed my hearing.
I’m not usually an impulse buyer, except for shoes that is, so I wasn’t prepared to purchase hearing aids right now. it did make me feel OLD, remembering the huge pink plastic things my dad didn’t wear, but kept next to him as he listened to TV at it’s loudest. Now, I was there, afraid I’d do the same thing. buy aids and not use them because they are so very ugly!
Well, welcome to the technical era, folks. Digital hearing aids and tiny tiny things-​smaller by half than your pricy ear buds and they offer much more ! Bluetooth enabled? You got it! Answer your phone thru your hearing aid. I could grow to like this.
Jason (I thought he said Jerry and he didn’t correct me) was the much touted factory rep, but I didn’t know. Because of the work I hd done, I was fairly informed about the frequencies at which people hear sound, so Jared-​or was it Jason?-could talk tech to me and he liked it. I thought my largest hearing loss was in my right ear but mentioned that when I had speakers put into a new car, I had them place a low freq-​like 400 – 600 Hz-​speaker in the doors so I could hear the bass notes in Pink Floyd’s The Wall, or The Lunatic, when the «you think I am mad?» murmuring begins the track. something I hadn’t heard since I had it on vinyl! Yep, getting old after going to 60 Grateful Dead concerts can kill your hearing, folks!
The test results were educational, but even more so was when Jeff-​or was it Jared? or Jason?- programmed a pair of trial digital hearing aids, the size of my pinky fingertip, to boost the specific frequencies I was not hearing!
What an amazing difference! I could actually hear my daughter whisper to me“I bet these are expensive!”
«No problem, I said. I’m just here to see whats available not to buy»
Thats what I thought at least.
I never felt ‘sold to’. The highest rated aid which has 48 different Freq adjustments possible, with a handy dandy laptop, which I can do minimal adjustments to on my iPhone with a free app, for peats sake and can you believe, and which I can sync via BlueTooth to my iPad for nighttime Audible book reading me to sleep sold themselves to me.
I got about a $ 2K discount, with money off the top, a free charger and other little bonuses. They come with a lifetime guarantee and the store manager, Jim-​whats with all the J mens names here? said he expected to see me every couple of weeks at first to tweak the programming as I became accustomed to them.
ONE WEEK LATER:
Since I’d already made appointments at Costco and Able Hearing to check out hearing aids there, I went ahead and kept those appointments, even though I had purchased hearing aids at Miracle-​Ear. I had a similar but frankly more comprehensive hearing exam at Able and Karl, the audiologist, wouldn’t prescribe hearing aids before I visited an ENT. This is something Karl said he was required to do as my hearing loss wasn’t totally typical of a noise induced loss-it’s possible it can be corrected by surgery if I want to do that.
I returned my $ 8000.00 hearing aids to Miracle-​Ear with a $ 500.00 return penalty BTW. My suggestion-​their product is great but do comparison shop before you commit and visit an ENT even before you go see about a hearing aid! I’m paying for my impulse buy-​I don’t regret the purchase and I miss the hearing aids a lot but I will see an ENT the first of July and hopefully some other less expensive option will be available!