New hearing aids, huh?

By Curt Swarm

Ginnie had been after me for some time to get new hearing aids. I put it off until after we could see some results from my cancer treatment. I can’t handle too many issues at once. Finally we could see light at the end of the tunnel, and it wasn’t a train. So I scheduled an appointment with the audiologist. I’ve had hearing aids for years, and was on my third pair. This last pair had been giving me problems so, like wearing old glasses when you’ve broken your good pair, I had reverted to an old set of hearing aids. No wonder Ginnie was on my case.

Anywho, the audiologist asked me if I’d noticed a decline in my hearing. I told her, “Yes.” She looked into my ears, first the right one, then the left.

“Hmm,” she said. “You’ve got something stuck in your left ear.”

“Huh? Oh, I do?”

“Lemme get some tweezers and pull it out.”

She started digging around in my ear, which didn’t feel good. I heard her mumble something unintelligible. “What the? I’m gonna have to get something bigger,” she said.

I didn’t see what she went after. She kind of kept it hidden from me. But it looked sorta like a needle-nose vice grip. She went to work on my ear again which didn’t feel a bit good. Then I felt a pressure on the side of my head. I think it was her foot. She pulled and tugged my head back and forth as I tried to hold steady. Finally the object in my ear gave way with a pop that sounded like a bottle of champagne being uncorked. She held the object in front of me. “That my friend,” she said, “is the tip or cone from a hearing aid. No wonder you noticed a decline in your hearing. I’ve never ever seen this happen before. It’s a first!”

“Well, I’ll be. You’re right, I can hear better now. I noticed a tip missing from one of the hearing aids but I didn’t know where it went. I thought it fell on the floor.”

Ginne was in the waiting room. The audiologist went out and said to Ginnie, “See what I found in your husband’s ear.”

Ginnie was incredulous. “How long has THAT been in there?”

“Your husband doesn’t know, but from the build up of ear wax on the tip, I guess about a month.”

This is just one story in a long line of hearing aid stories. There was the time I was picking apples and a tree branch plucked a hearing aid right out of my ear, never to be seen again. I looked in the grass, the tree, nada.

I lost a hearing aid in my recliner one time and couldn’t find it. (I like to sleep in the recliner.) I had to get by with just one hearing aid for a week or so. Then Stormy our cat showed up with it. We think he has a secret stash somewhere.

Of course, when COVID first came out, everyone, including me, was losing their hearing aids. The band on the face masks, that stretches over your ear, dislodges the hearing aid when removing the mask. People spent a lot of time on the floor looking for their hearing aids, and a lot of money on the ones they couldn’t find.

Last but not least was the time I lost a hearing aid in the garden while picking tomatoes. Luckily I found it. It was in a garden spider’s web. Yikes!

My new hearing aids will be in at the end of the month. The audiologist asked if I wanted the insurance in case of loss.

Ginnie elbowed me in the ribs. “I guess I do,” I said.

Contact Curt Swarm at curtswarm@yahoo.com