I finally decided to spend the $600, I finally made the appointment, I finally went in.

The ear molds on my hearing aids aren’t just a chunk of plastic–they have microphones to back up the mics in the upper pieces behind the ears.

You clean them with a fine wire threaded through–but it almost never went through anymore. Too many pock marks to catch on after three years, I guess.

If your weight changes, the ear molds don’t fit anymore: gain weight, they can start to hurt, lose weight, they get loose and don’t transmit sound as well. But also, with my connective tissue disease, my ear canals are easily irritated and last time they cut the things down and short so they wouldn’t, literally, make my ears bleed.

But maybe a little too much. And seven pounds I lost with the flu in December somehow never came back.

It all adds up.

So, said the audiologist on Tuesday, what made you decide you need new molds?

I looked at her. I said, You’ll have to repeat that because I didn’t get it at all.

Aaaaah. Got it. And we discussed details from there.

(And also because she’s retiring and it was my last chance to see her for sure and I’ll miss her dearly. Nothing like a deadline.)

The hearing aids needed a software updating so they did that. The ears needed wax out to make the proper mold, so, yeah, that, too. She injected pink foam into my ears, waited for it to solidify, and then off it went to Oticon.

I did it, I finally did it.

Except that now I have to sit here and wait and not have my new improved hearing yet that I’m suddenly allowing myself to want so much and it’s been two days already. Gee, what could I do with my hands to keep them busy and me distracted in the meantime.