For the average person with good hearing, hearing impairment can not even be anything they can conceive, other than a person being totally deaf, and then I believe they even can not begin to have a concept of how it effects that person effected.  Hearing aids are just that, an AID, not a real replacement for the real thing, or even a partial cure.  These aids have been improved considerably in recent years, but just ask anyone who wears one and I will bet they are not totally satisfied for one reason or the other.

   Most aid wearers may also learn somewhat to lip read.

  There are many different aspects of hearing impairment, some in the high tones, while others lower.  Then to those impaired, when you get the younger person (female especially) who have a higher pitch tone, coupled with them talking FAST, or someone from a foreign country with an accent, the hearing impaired person is just lost. 

  This person if in a meeting or room where a lot of people are talking, the background noise can many times over-rides the aid's ability to help that person to separate things out. However the newer aids have the ability to mask out some of that. They will not join in any conversations, if they do, it may just be they just nod their head in agreement to anything that they thought they heard.  They also dislike shopping or especially going through a drive through diner or even ordering at a restaurant because they can not distinguish the waitress clearly enough to understand.  They may just give up and say yes, then take what food was brought to them.  Or if they are in company of another, "I will take what she is getting". 

  Then even calling to make even a doctor's appointment is at times frustrating.  It also seems that many businesses hire the newest and cheapest recruit possible as a receptionist, which may even be a person from another country who has horrible English, (providing them to be compliant with government requirements) AND who talks very fast.  Again frustration, even to the point of asking to speak to their supervisor.   It would be nice if the boss occasionally called his/her own business to see what/how customers were exposed to. 

  The Audiologist is the heart of keeping the person informed and can, possibly adjust the aid from time to time.  Some Audiologists understand completely and are very helpful, while others are lacking experience, but they fake it, being just fresh out of Bar Tending school, where the audiologist only can program your aids by what computer program the audiologist THINKS fits you.  Like "Normal", Restaurant",  "Church", or "Car'.  They seem to not be able to convert your hearing test results into real time evaluations.   And everyone has different needs, where on better than over 1/2 of us can not communicate exactly to the audiologist what is missing, just that I can't hear this or that.   So they may be guessing, but doing the best they can under the circumstances.

   The one thing that I see many times, is a person who gets their first set, that they need to go back regularly for initial adjustments.   But many think OK, I got a new set, and they just don't perform as advertised, so they quit wearing them. Not like getting a set of glasses.   BAD, BAD, BAD as you need to communicate with the audiologist, sure they are reading your test results, but, if something, (like your environment) that needs to be taken into account, it can usually be made better.  By this, it will usually be a background noise, like people talking, machinery running, or even circulating fans.  One of the worst for me was in a restaurant, where people were eating/talking and the ventilation fans in the kitchen were overwhelming.  Even riding in a car, where road noise drowns out being able to understand your passenger.  With the newer style aids, most of these can be eliminated or at least improved.

  I am not frustrated with my new aids, as I think they have many capabilities, however I am frustrated with my young audiologist.  How my aids are set up, I have 3 or 4 programmed settings, with one setting that I can adjust using WiFi to my cell phone to fit the surroundings.  At my next meeting, I am going to ask if it is possible to change these pre-programmed settings to where I can set them all myself.  On the one program that I can adjust, I can tweak it at a meeting so I can understand, but with only one of these, at each meeting that the settings (background noise is different), it is a PITA. 

  My old audiologist understood my loss and could adjust my aids pretty darned well, not this new one however.  I know what I can hear,  HOWEVER, it is about impossible to put into words the sounds that I CANNOT hear.

  Then there are those impaired persons who are older or have work related hearing impairment, being on Labor & Industries Insurance funded aids, from which the Audiologist does not get reimbursed as much as regular customers, therefore less time is usually spent with these customers.

    And it the aid has issues and goes SOUTH, where they cannot fix it in house, they have to get authorization from L&I before they can send it in.  In cases like this where it would be sent in for repairs, it would be beneficial to have a set of your older aids as a standby.  Maybe not as effective as your newer ones but one hell of a lot better than nothing.

   One thing to keep in mind, if you are looking for your first or even a replacement, is today they are pushing for small in the ear almost invisible aids.   These will have a nylon fish line type wire protruding with a small knob on the end for retrieval.   These can, over time pull out of the aid and you have trouble removing one.  Maybe women with longer finger nails may be able to get one out of the ear, but us older generation men who have abused our hands/fingers in a lifetime of abusing them suffer from not having that ability.  Also, as with us older Geezers, who may have fumble fingers, or arthritis, the small ones may not be a good choice.