Opticon Digital Hearing Aids and my experience with them.

I wrote in my previous blogs about my challenges I had using cell phones with my hearing aids. When I was having problems at work hearing on the phone and understanding customers that were talking to me I went to look for help. I made an appointment with the Texas Department of Assistive and Rehabilitative Services (DARS). My DARS counselor explained to me that there were many new advances in hearing assistive devices and sent to an audiologist for a new hearing test and to determine what would be for me.

My meeting with my audiologist gave me a lot of hope. He explained that the hearing aids I was wearing was old technology and that I should try out some new digital hearing aids made by Opticon. He told me that I would hear things more clearly and I would pick up sounds that I normally didn't pick up with the older analog hearing aids. So he took new ear mold impressions and ordered my new hearing aids.


It wasn't very long and soon I was back at the audiologist getting new hearing aids fitted and programmed. He also surprised me by showing me that these hearing aids came with an extra device known as a streamer that communicated to my hearing aids via wireless communication. The device is can communicate with my cell phone using blue tooth technology. You see folks walking around all the time with a blue tooth device in their ear and now this streamer device will do the same thing for me but instead transmit the sound directly into my hearing aids. The sound quality of a cell phone call is just amazing compared to what I was used to. The other neat feature is you can plug your MP3 player or iPod into the stream and play music directly into your hearing aids. I immediately went home and plugged my MP3 player into the streamer and started listening to my favorite music.

When I got my new T-Mobile Gravity 2 phone my husband went ahead and purchased the 4 Gigabyte SD card. I already knew that this phone was compatible to my streamer to handle calls via blue tooth but what about the music player option on the phone? We loaded up some of my favorite songs on the the SD card and decided to test it out. I was actually very surprised to be hearing music streaming into my ears with no wires attached to my ear or streamer. It worked like a charm and have been very happy with the new phone and streamer combo.

With all the things I do like about the hearing aids they do happen to have some draw-backs. First off the hearing aids were designed to filter out background noises so when I'm at work or in a restaurant I can focus on the person talking to me. So what's the bad thing? Well it appears that what is also missing is environmental noises as well such as background music, birds or noises in a distance. I sometimes feel that I cannot hear any of my surroundings and it bugs me.

On top of the surrounding issue I was used to individual volume controls on my analog hearing aids however my new hearing aids work together and if I turn up the volume on one it turns up on both. If I'm hearing too much in one ear and not enough in the other then my only option is to go back to the audiologist and have him reprogram the hearing aids. After getting these hearing aids I reported back to the audiologist five times in just two months for adjustments for sound.

I have also had to report back to the audiologist multiple times because the hearing aids have stopped working correctly. I have had to have internal and external speakers replaced on them a few times already. I have had the hearing aids sent in for repairs twice and it hasn't even been a year since I have had them.

These hearing aids also require a new mold that require a lot of maintenance by the user. You must buy little rubber wax stoppers to help prevent wax from going into the mold. This doesn't seem like a bad idea except for how often you end up changing them. This also requires me to visit the audiologist often just to buy refills of the was stoppers.

These hearing aids also use a smaller battery than my analogs and have to be replaced within a week and a half compared to my old hearing aids where a battery would last for three weeks. I think part of this issue is the fact that the hearing aids have off button. Yes that is correct no easy way to turn off the hearing aids. I'm told by the audiologist that you pull the battery out of the hearing aids to turn them off. This is very inconvenient when I'm laying down for the night and leave my hearing aids on the nightstand. If I wake up and need to hear something I must put the battery in and close it and then power on the hearing aids. I've been known to loose a few batteries because of this very issue.