My wife was right!

My first contacts with hearing aid clinics were pretty ordinary. They instilled no confidence in me, and I wasn’t about to risk a big financial commitment to people who failed to win me over. They did confirm, however, that my wife had been right all these years, and I’d been wrong – I had a hearing loss. It was a hard pill to swallow, but getting hearing aidswas the next step and to that end, I needed to have confidence in someone I felt comfortable with and felt I could trust.

The early assault on my hearing was from growing up on a farm with my ears damaged from general farm noise like driving tractors without cabins. That’s how life was in the days before we became aware that noise damaged hearing. My first job away from the farm was on a university campus, but later I went to work in a quarry because the pay on campus wasn’t enough to support a wife.

Some years later, as a mortgage broker working for an employer, I needed to discuss loans with clients. That was fine when I was talking one-on-one in quiet, but often there were two clients, likely with one talking and the other commenting, (sometimes with one hand over their mouth). This was very challenging and I often had to wing it. In this job I also needed to attend events such as cocktail parties and bank functions with lots of other people. I might as well have gone home, because someone would be talking to me, one-on-one, but I couldn’t hear a thing they were saying. My strategy became to either not turn up at all, or to go home early. So I know only too well how people can become socially isolated through not being able to participate in conversations. I am now working for myself as a mortgage broker and can go to functions and participate easily, and at times I wonder how many others there have hearing impairment that isn’t treated.

For me, addressing my hearing difficulties was a big emotional and financial step and I didn’t want to make a mistake. It was really important that I had confidence in the audiologist, and I was very careful in choosing that person. What made my choice much easier too was being able to take the aids home for a couple of weeks’ trial. I was certain about the people I was dealing with here, that they knew their stuff, and this has been ongoing for a couple of years now.

I recommend Brad Hutchinson Hearing to anyone who wants the best service they can get, because this is a really important part of getting hearing aids.

Terry Quinn-Conroy