Or, You Can Trade In Old Hearing Aids For $200 Back From America Hears

If you don't want to grind up your old unused hearing aids in a blender as seen in the funny Blendtec video, and if you have already made your charitable donations for the year and don't feel you need to donate them for recycling, there is another way to get them out of your drawer: you can trade in two of your old aids for $200 off the price of a pair of new digital hearing aids from America Hears. The promotion means you can get a pair from America Hears, the only direct-to-consumer online provider of premium programmable digital hearing aids, for $895 a piece.  It's a great deal, as America Hears' flat $995-per-hearing-aid price is already less than half the cost of other premium brands. I recently wrote about my experience with a new pair of America Hears aids, which allow you to make programming adjustments at home.

Posted by David on May 3, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Don't Blend Your Hearing Aids, Recycle Them Through The Lions Club

A few people were mightily disturbed by the funny video of Blendtec founder Tom Dickson grinding up a bunch of hearing aids in his company's high-tech blender. But at least one reader went beyond complaining and made the helpful suggestion to donate them to someone who needs them. The Lions Club will do it for you. I'm always up for a good laugh, and those "Will it Blend" videos are very well done. And compared to the tens of millions of dollars' worth of hearing aids sitting unsed in people's drawers, the waste of a few aids in Tom's blender seems like small change to me. If anything, I hope it's raised awareness of the problem of unused hearing aids and help encourage people to do two things: one, try new aids if the old ones didn't work the first time, because technology has gotten so much better; and two, do something useful with those unused aids--recycle them. The Lions Club International has been involved with hearing-loss issues since the days of Helen Keller and has a great recycling program. You can donate your aids at a number of the Lions Club centers around the country and rest assured they will be recyled for use by someone who otherwise couldn't afford them. It's a great program and worth your support. So, if you or a relative have some old hearing aids of your own sitting in the drawer, don't blend them, recycle them.

Posted by David on May 3, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Why Don't Hearing-Aid Companies Caption Their YouTube Videos?

My blogger friend Dr. Tom Goyne has several interesting posts with links to videos that Phonak, Widex, Oticon and other major hearing-aid companies are putting on the web. Great, but....Why aren't any of the hearing-aid manufacturers' videos  captioned?!??! Some of the videos are really slick productions. Like Tom, I applaud their efforts to reach out directly to consumers to erase the old stigma of hearing aids and educate people about the new technologies that make hearing aids so much better than they used to be. (They are the next step in the consumer marketing trend kicked into high gear last year by Phonak, which blitzed the fashion world with its high-glam Audeo ads.) How ironic, and what a disappointment, then, to find that none of the videos are captioned. I really would love to see what that earnest Widex customer has to say in her testimonial.

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Posted by David on Apr 25, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Blendtec Shows What You Can Do With Your Unused Hearing Aids

Are you tired of seeing your father’s hearing aids sitting unused in the drawer? Do you want to send him a message he won’t forget? Visit one of the funniest web sites I've seen recently. It's called "Will it Blend?" hosted by Blendtec, the commercial blender company, which created an internet sensation with its YouTube video showing an industrial-strength blender grinding an Apple iPhone to dust. The iPhone video has been viewed four million times and counting. Now click here for Blendtec founder Tom Dickson’s hilarious video of someone who looks like your father donating multiple pairs of hearing aids for the same treatment. The video is a hoot, but the old guy who has tossed his last hearing aid into the blender gets the last laugh when he says “That’s the quietest blender I ever heard!”

Posted by David on Apr 24, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

Yes, You Can Buy Premium-Quality Digital Hearing Aids Over The Internet

I recently got a new pair of hearing aids, and I'm as excited as if I'd just bought a new sports car. One of the reasons I'm so happy is that I was able to take ownership of the process for the first time by getting them from America Hears, Inc., which sells and supports hearing-aid consumers directly over the internet. I still love my audiologist, but I'm always looking for something new, and America Hears not only offered a new product but also an entirely new way of getting hearing assistance. I ordered exactly what I wanted, got a set of aids in the mail programmed to my audiogram, and then I was able to make adjustments using software they gave me for my PC with the help of the America Hears audiologist at the other end of the phone. Because the company manufactures and sells direct to consumers, their hearing aids are much less expensive than other premium brands. My expectation was that I'd get a serviceable product, but without the bells and whistles of my high-end Widex hearing aids. However, I was stunned when America Hears sent me full-function, premium digital products that provided me with a much better hearing experience in every way. 

Here's the short story, though I will write more about it in future posts. To get an America Hears hearing aid, all you have to do is fax the company a copy of a recent audiogram. They build a fully digital product, and their staff audiologists program it exactly to your specifications. They ship it to you along with software and a simple programmer you can use with your PC to adjust your hearing aids further. Because they sell and support direct without any middlemen, they are very affordable, charging only $995 per hearing aid. That's less than half what other makers of premium-brand hearing aids charge. They charge the same price for any of their models, wihch range from new open-fit speaker-in-the-ear products to traditional behind-the-ear models to numerous in-the-ear designs.  

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Posted by David on Apr 20, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

He's Blind, I'm Deaf. What Do I Have In Common With New York State Governor David Paterson?

In the past few months my day job has picked up to the point where I haven't had a lot of time do write about hearing loss. In fact, I haven't had much time even to think about my hearing loss. That's a pretty amazing fact, given that only several years ago I thought about my hearing loss all the time and never imagined I'd function "normally" again. I've written before about how the brain gradually adapts and compensates for deficiencies, and how amazed I have been at the extent of my ability to function at higher and higher levels as time goes on. It's hard to describe. That's why I love the fact that David Paterson, the new governor of New York State, is demonstrating how and why he is able to do one of the world's most demanding jobs even though he is blind. Stephen Kuusisto, a blind author and educator, wrote an Op-Ed article in the New York Times this week that talks about this coping process very eloquently. It resonates well with anyone who has gone through the process of learning how to work around their hearing loss:

I imagine the future governor’s information-gathering skills are supple and inexhaustible. Blind people are invariably creative and resourceful. Obviously we’re good listeners. But what people may not know is that learning to have a keen sense for what others are talking about requires developing an equally sharp curiosity about human beings. When people talk to me, I can’t just listen; I am also compelled to take stock of the person behind the words....That’s perhaps the most important thing for the public to understand about professionals who are blind — we are by nature tireless in acquiring information, and we remember virtually every detail of what we read or hear.

I've found in business and life generally that dealing with a disability sharpens you in every other way. I need to know more going into a meeting and be more comprehensive in my follow-up. I have to think about the story behind the story, and understand on a deeper level who and what I am dealing with than people who can get by on more superficial information by hearing only what they need to, rather than truly listening. I know it's a cliche to say that sometimes adversity brings with it certain gifts, but it's true. 

Posted by David on Mar 15, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (2) |

'Hearing-Aid Hacking' Gives The Inside Word On Assistive-Listening Technology

I just discovered a LiveJournal site called "Hearing-Aid Hacking" which gives great do-it-yourself advice on using assistive listening technologies with hearing aids. It features tips and new technologies from real hearing-aid users, everything from how to work with the direct-audio-input (DAI) connections on your hearings aids (if they have them), to the latest on new Bluetooth technologies (especially for mobile phone users) and on the new bells and whistles that hearing-aid manufacturers seem to constantly announce. Here is the site's mission statement: "For high end users of hearing aids. We're frustrated that we're behind the technology curve and pay huge dollars/pounds/euros for good hearing aids that are unaware of and incompatible with anything resembling recent advances in consumer audio tech. We're willing to blaze our own path because no one will do it for us until they realize there is money in them thar hills." If you are a new or experienced hearing-aid user, there is probably something there for you.

Posted by David on Dec 18, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Can "Musicophilia" by Oliver Sacks Explain Why I'm Hearing Better?

I just picked up Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain by Oliver Sacks, and it is a revelation. Sacks is a physician and neurological specialist who has written extensively on previously unexplained phenomena with the brain. His book Awakenings, about coma patients who were administered a drug and awakened, returning briefly to normal lives, only to tragically lapse back into their comas when the drugs wore off, was made into a major motion picture with Robert DeNiro and Robin Williams in 1990.  Musicophilia is a big book about how the brain assimilates, creates, and otherwise processes music. Because of Sacks’s passion for understanding how the brain interacts with the physical world, it has a lot of information on how the brain works with the hearing organs to process sound and interpret what we hear. Most exciting to me, it hints at some of the reasons why I’ve experienced a marked improvement over the past several years in my ability to hear -- not music, which is still gone completely for me, but to hear and understand people’s voices – even when my physical hearing tests have shown no improvement and even slight decline in hearing levels in both ears. Sacks is making me wonder whether the amazing human brain actually has the ability to correct and “cure” hearing loss to some degree, even when the physical hearing organs are damaged beyond repair.

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Posted by David on Dec 14, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Why Don't Mobile Phone Carriers Offer Inexpensive Data-Only Plans?

Stone Deaf Pilots has a nice writeup about AT&T Wireless stepping in it when it offered a data-only wireless plan, but only for deaf customers. After complaints from the hearing community about discrimination, AT&T shelved the offer, promising to come back later with a wireless-only plan for everyone. It's crazy AT&T and all the other carriers for that matter don't offer inexpensive data-only plans for everyone. AT&T used to offer a very reasonable data-only plan with a nifty little device called the OGO. But that seems to have disappeared. T-Mobile is the only carrier offering a reasonably priced data-only plan for its Sidekick products. I have a Verizon family plan for the mobile phones and find text messaging useful, but I may actually get a T-Mobile account and Sidekick as well for email, instant messaging, and text messaging because, believe it or not, I think it will be less expensive than getting the data option added to my Verizon Wireless account.

Posted by David on Dec 14, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

Vaccination Can Lessen Meningitis Risk For Cochlear Implant Patients

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has issued a new warning that cochlear implant patients make sure they get vaccinated against bacterial meningitis, a potentially deadly infection causing inflammation of the meninges, or lining of the brain. Several years ago a meningitis scare nearly halted the miraculous forward march of cochlear implant technology, as researchers struggled to find the cause of a rash of meningitis cases among children who had received implants. It was determined that a small rubber wedge used by surgeons to position the electrodes in the cochlea most likely led to higher incidences of infection, including meningitis. The positioner was only used with Advanced Bionics implants and the company quickly changed its surgical procedure so that the positioner was no longer needed. There still is some risk of meningitis infections, but it can be dramatically alleviated by ensuring patients are fully vaccinated. The FDA issued the new warning after two cochlear implant patients died from infections. Neither was fully vaccinated, and one likely died because of the lack of vaccination, the FDA said. It also noted a survey of cochlear implanted children revealed nearly half did not know whether their children had been fully vaccinated. It is advising healthcare providers to ensure their patients have proper vaccinations.

Posted by David on Oct 24, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)