Sound Quality

The number one reason I got the Esteem is quality of life.  Being able to hear all the time is absolutely priceless and worth every second of pain after surgery.  The other big reason is better sound quality.  Since I was born deaf (lower case d on purpose!), I had only heard with hearing aids.  Without amplification, I could only hear extremely loud sounds (blender, lawn mower, etc.).  I honestly thought that hearing aids produced sound "normal" people hear.  I was SO wrong. With my Esteem, I'm not only hearing things I've never heard before, but I hear things completely differently.  For instance, I can hear individual sounds.  With hearing aids, sound is jumbled.  I can't think of a better way to describe it.  All the sounds happen at the same time and it's all amplified.  If you're in a restaurant, the chairs moving and silverware hitting plates is just as loud as the people you want to listen to.  It all blends together in a very loud, uncomfortable jumble.  Of course, I didn't know any different until May.  I was blissfully ignorant. :)  Now, things sound clear.  I don't have to work all the time to understand sound.  See, with hearing aids, even when I could hear sound, I didn't understand it easily.  I had to try hard to distinguish sounds and figure out what I was hearing.  It was the worst with speech.  Ever seen a Bad Lipreading video?  Sounds are very, very similar when you don't hear them clearly and lots of sounds look the same when lipreading.  The Esteem makes hearing easy.

Oddly enough, since I got my new hearing aid, I can't stand it.  I wore hearing aids for 22 years.  If the right one broke, I was hysterical and couldn't function.  I was completely dependent on them, no way around it. I had good, top of the line (Read: Expensive!) hearing aids Now, frankly, it sounds like crap.  Everything is obnoxiously loud and distracting.  It amazes me how well my brain learned to process the horrible sound quality I had for years and makes me ever so grateful for the Esteem.  In fact, when I'm singing at church, I have to take the hearing aid out.  Everything sounds horrible with it - and it's not because the settings are wrong.  Hearing aids just sound bad.  I never realized it because I didn't know what sound was supposed to sound like, but now I do.  And it's absolutely amazing!

I've shared this video before, but a lot more people read this now. :)  This video is a very accurate portrayal of what hearing aids sound like.  It is incredible that any amplification technology exists and allows hard of hearing people to function in a hearing world, but I am so very thankful that I don't have to hear like this anymore. :)