If you have tinnitus, or suspect you might have a hearing loss, or are just having to turn the TV…read moresound up, or can't quite distinguish words in conversations with friends, especially at restaurants, I highly recommend you to go see Linda Erickson at Associated Audiologists! Probably the others are just as good, but she's been awesome!
I was first told I needed hearing aids in 2008. But I "knew" I was way too young (not even 60 yet!) for anything like that, and vehemently fought getting them. I had just developed tinnitus, which is commonly referred to as "ringing in your ears," so I didn't know what it was, because mine was summer night sounds...cicadas and crickets. And since it was summer, when I spent many evenings in my hammock, I just kept thinking I'd left a window open!
As it turns out, tinnitus is ALMOST ALWAYS a sign of hearing loss, and when I casually mentioned it to my doctor, he said "Get thee to an audiologist ASAP!"
Although I did get tested at the time, and did have a fairly significant hearing loss (no cause was ever determined, and I hadn't ever spent much time listening to ear-splitting music at concerts or with headphones), it took me six years to bite the bullet and get hearing aids. And it took learning that uncorrected hearing loss can put you on the fast track to dementia and/or Alzheimer's (because your brain is getting far less stimulation from speech and other sounds around you, and brain receptors start to die off) to get me to throw vanity out the window!
I will be eternally grateful to Linda Erickson, Sr. Audiologist at Associated Audiologists, for her kindness, caring, professionalism, and ability to explain everything I needed to know. Then and now, she always takes the time to answer any questions, and to make sure I have the best possible experience with hearing aids.
Had I known how much they would improve my life and how advanced the technology had become since the days of my mother's hearing aids, which were like big pieces of bubblegum in her ears that caused lots of feedback (she wouldn't wear them, and due to dementia, she mistakenly threw them in the trash!), I would have gotten them SO much sooner!
I was able to do free trials of two or three different hearing aids before I discovered Associated Audiologists, and that experience proved to me that the technology truly had greatly advanced, but none of them was right for me. It took Linda Erickson to find just the right ones for me.
So if you have old-fashioned ideas about hearing aids and only remember people telling you how awful they were, I encourage you to think again, and get the facts. Even in just the four years since I got mine, the technology has significantly advanced. You won't believe how tiny and practically invisible to others they can be...they can even match them to your hair color if you wear outside-the-ear hearing aids, so vanity really isn't an issue anymore!
