OUR GUIDE TO ENJOY HEARING AGAIN
Will lead you through the steps to enjoying hearing.
Maintaining your hearing makes a big difference in your life and your enjoyment of social situations. Hearing loss can shift your listening from second nature to feeling like hard work. As a result you may find yourself avoiding noisy social events and other activities that make it difficult to understand what you are hearing. Annual hearing checks are vital to your health and wellbeing. Are you neglecting your ears?
Read the steps below to follow to care for your ears and your hearing!
1: Make an appointment for your hearing test
Phone or email today to book your appointment. When you arrive, you will be greeted by our friendly staff and you will meet your qualified Hearing Aid Audiologist at O’Grady’s.
We will discuss your hearing and examine your ears for possible physical causes of hearing loss including earwax build-up, infection, or a growth.
A hearing test will be performed to measure your ears’ ability to detect sounds at various frequencies or pitches. The entire process may take about 1 hour. No part of the examination causes pain and following even just your first visit you will receive results and advice to help you to find a solution for your hearing.
Don’t hesitate to ask questions during your test and try to be as open and relaxed as possible. The more we know about you at O’Grady’s, the better we will be able to help you to Enjoy Hearing Again.
2: Choose your hearing system
Depending on your test results, we can give you a recommendation of hearing solutions best suited to your hearing and personal needs. This may include wearing a hearing aid to support your hearing. Feel free to do your own research as well including by looking at through our website’s ‘Hearing Aid’ pages.
We may very well know what best suits your needs, but the ultimate decision is up to you. Making a decision to wear hearing aids, and choose which ones, can take time. O’Grady’s are here with you for this decision!
Take a look at a video about hearing aids at the bottom of this page to help with your research!
3: Have your ear impression made
If you choose a custom hearing aid, then we will take an ear impression, which is an exact duplicate of the shape of your ear canal. Your audiologist at O’Grady’s will use a putty to make the impression of your ear to ensure your hearing aid will fit comfortably in your ear.
Your ear impression is sent to the hearing aid manufacturers to make your hearing aid. This usually only takes a few days.
4: Schedule your fitting
Your next appointment will be for the fitting of your hearing aid.
‘Fine tuning’ of the hearing aid to customise it to your exact hearing needs will be completed by your audiologist at O’Grady’s at this time. This might include programming adjustments which are completed with a computer, based on your audiogram and your own comments about how it feels to hear with the aid(s).
During this appointment, we will teach you how to operate your hearing aid, and how to hear best in different environments. You will also practice inserting and removing your hearing aids and learn how to clean and care for them. You might also learn about what additional supports are available, including using smartphone apps to help control your hearing aid!
5: Follow up visits
The next step will be to wear your new hearing aids for a few weeks in your everyday life and in regular surroundings. It may be a good idea to keep a diary to record your experiences and thoughts of the sounds you hear.
Remember that the more you wear your hearing aids, the better your ears and brain will adjust to the new, improved way of hearing!
Based upon how well you can hear in your everyday surroundings, or if any problems arise, we may make additional adjustments to your hearing aids if necessary at your follow up visit. Remember that your care with O’Grady’s Hearing Care does not just stop there. Follow up visits and reviews with your audiologist can be arranged at any time after you receive your hearing aids.
6: Learn to ‘Enjoy Hearing Again’
Learning to hear and listen with new hearing aids takes time and a degree of patience in the beginning. You may need to learn to ignore unwanted sounds, just as you used to do with normal hearing.
It‘s also important to be realistic and not to expect 100% hearing in every situation. We do hope that there will be a considerable improvement with hearing when compared to trying to hear without aids, however.
We can help you through this important time. Some sounds may be too sharp or too dull, and it can take time to learn about your hearing aids, but we at O’Grady’s Hearing Care will do all that we can to ensure that you ‘Enjoy Hearing Again’. Read our client’s testimonials to help receive feedback and advice from other people in your position, or speak to Gerard O’Grady who is a wearer of hearing aids himself!