The follow-up appointment on the new hearing aids.

How do you like them? She noticed that I had the charger in that bag next to my purse and was clearly wondering if I was going to return them. We were within the 30-day window.

I love them and I hate them, I told her, wincing as I took the left one off and putting my old ones in so we could have a conversation. First, I said, the charger. There’s no lid on the thing. Were you here during the Loma Prieta quake? (She wasn’t.) They’ll go flying out of there in the next one, and the green lights light up the room at night and I have to cover it. They should have made it with its own.

Re the aids themselves, I explained that it was one day in, one or two days out and using the old ones, and finally I’d left them out for three days running to let my ears heal.

Let your ears heal?

And then I’d worn them to church yesterday, where the whole time there I heard one half of one sentence. Period. (She winced.) Yay for Zoom captions on my phone. Went straight home and put the old ones in and had my husband look at my ears. He could see red marks on both sides. I put the new ones in this morning so that you could see.

She got out her otoscope and took a look. I had told her three weeks earlier about the connective tissue disease making it hard for my ears to tolerate the tight fit that is required to best transmit the sound through the ear molds and that it’s long been a tradeoff with me giving up some hearing, that my ears had actually bled after one prior pair was made.

But it didn’t need to be like that at that point and that point on the molds and she could do something about it. She was a little wistful that they wouldn’t look so perfect, and I laughed and turned my head way to the side, mimicking and laughing at the idea of someone looking way in past my hair to criticize my ear molds. She laughed.

I told her that the sound was really brassy at first but was gradually starting to settle down and then when I didn’t wear them it got bright and brassy again–but when I kept wearing them it was doing better and my husband and daughter both remarked on how I was hearing more. And I was.

And then I’d go back to the old ones for the pain and have to start over.

She took them in the other room to use the right equipment/lighting/whatever and came back with them.

I put them on.

Night and day. Wow. So I *can* do this.

I asked her about–and I explained what a glissando is: when you run your fingers fast all the way down the white keys on the piano. Twice in one conversation the right one had suddenly done something like that, completely substituting for the conversation it was supposed to be transmitting to me.

She thought about that a moment and then realized what it must be: there’s a program that tries to stop feedback from happening. Because the ear hurt, I must not have had the aid in all the way and the tilted angle was trying to set off feedback and the aid was trying to warn me and stop it.

Okay, so I don’t have to do that anymore. Good.

I still have to let my ears heal from wearing them yesterday morning and today as they were, but the sound is already improving and the brassiness is already fading. I’m not at church or the like to really test them, and my daughter’s gone back to her sister’s now, but so far so good, and such a relief to have a comfortable fit on these. I don’t yet know if it’s enough. She can do more if need be.

I plugged the charger back in once I got home in a mental declaration: these stay. Mine.