About 8 years ago, I was in my ENT’s office having my annual thyroid check due to nodules found while diagnosing a parotid gland knot that ended up resulting in a parotidectomy for a benign tumor. I mentioned that I had recently realized that when sleeping on my left side, I couldn’t hear household noises or the television in the next room with my right ear. I was immediately escorted over to the audiologist next door and given my first professional hearing test. I had mild hearing loss in my left ear and moderate loss in my right with much more significant loss at high frequencies in my right ear. I was also sent for a head MRI to make sure there wasn’t something else going on and it was normal. My mother had unilateral hearing loss and I was told it can be genetic. All of this resulted in a right ear hearing aid, not wanting to spend a fortune on two aids. For several years I struggled with the imbalance of having only the one aid and about that time, OTC aids were becoming available and they were rechargeable and at a reasonable price.
After some research, a pair was purchased with the idea of only using the OTC one in my left (better) ear and continue with the prescriptive one that required weekly battery changes. After the prescriptive one began to fail, a better pair of OTC ones were purchased that could be adjusted by an app on the phone. This worked fairly well for about a year or so.
Recently though, hearing (more understanding) unless I was sitting directly across from the speaker and in a quiet place was becoming more difficult. It was causing me stress and even stress for hubby. Last weekend when we were visiting son and his family, family games were even difficult and he was having to “translate” to me what others farther down the table were saying. As a result, I called the audiologist and scheduled an appointment, it had been 3 years. Today I saw her and though I still have fairly good lower frequency hearing in my left ear, it has deteriorated in the upper ranges and my right year has deteriorated overall. The word recognition part put me in the low moderate loss range. New high tech aids have been ordered and a custom mold made for the right ear that has a wonky ear canal. Hopefully when they come in, hearing will improve. We didn’t choose the absolute highest level ones they had, but close.
I know that they don’t make hearing normal and certain accomodations still need to be made, but hopefully the higher tech product will help in the noisier environments. It had even gotten stressful attending my spinning group as many side conversations go on at the same time and I end up sitting like a deer in the headlights as I can’t follow any of them.
Oh the joys of getting older.
Cabin Crafted 
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