I went to the audiologist this past week, concerned that perhaps my hearing was getting worse?

Looking the thing over, it only took him a moment: no, actually, the problem is this is broken.

With my pair of hearing aids, there’s a speaker in the aid itself, which is normal, and one in the earmold too, which was a novelty when these came on the market three years ago. (Maybe it still is, I don’t know.)

The tiny filter piece had gone missing, I knew that, and for all I knew it was still in my ear. He looked: nope. But under where it was supposed to be there was supposed to be a spring keeping that first speaker at a particular distance but that speaker was quite dislodged. The only thing for it was to replace the whole thing.

No earwax in the way, good: and so he injected my ear with pink blob and had me wiggle my jaw around while it dried to help shape it so as to be comfortable when I’m talking or eating. The model got sent to the manufacturer and the whole process would take about a week.

I had him make two, as long as he was at it, both of them going further into the ear than my current ones. We know from three years ago that doing this delivers a lot more sound. But also that they hurt to wear if I’m not really really careful, because of the whole connective-tissue-disease thing that wants no pressure anywhere especially from hard objects like these. No fiddling with the things. This time, at least, I know all that going in: if I irritate anything it means several days of not wearing them at all while it settles down and maybe even having to give up again and go back to shorter ones, so let’s just not. I want to hear everything possible.

This could actually be the start of things being much better–I think I need to tamp down the hyperactive hope a little bit because after all, once I get used to them they’ll simply feel like normal. But a much better normal, hopefully.

So you heard it here first: when it comes to hearing aids, I totally broke the mold.