I can hear again!!!

Almost a year ago I realised that my hearing was getting pretty bad when at an interview for a project I could not hear the questions that my older colleagues heard (albeit also with difficulty). We lost - thankfully since we all have more than enough work, but if the reason were the answers to the questions I thought I heard, it's not fair to colleagues. Crowd scenes have been troublesome for even longer than that, and when colleagues begin to say, 'don't worry about having a meeting in our room, she won't hear you anyway', it's time something was done.

So off I went to the hearing man today. Right enough, old age has caught up with me, and there is a noticeable loss in the speech register. Not convenient - as I know only too well. Thankfully technology has moved on in the last couple of years or so, and now I have a very dinky little hearing aid which you hardly notice; shaped like a slightly larger paracetamol caplet, an elegant grey almost matching my glasses which it sits beside, and without those awful earmolds that older hearing aids have. And here in Lithuania it's half the price that the same make and model has in Germany!

The difference is amazing! I pick up conversations much better; this evening before a concert I had a chat with a guy sitting at a table, lots of background noise, and no problems whatsoever. Whilst testing it in a restaurant this morning I overheard the conversation of an Irishman who seemed to have to go to court for something...interesting. The concert blasted me a bit, to be fair, and trying to turn it down caused it to whistle for a microsecond. All sorts of other sounds that I had forgotten are coming back loud and clear. It's slightly disconcerting at the moment that I pick up noises from quite far away and think they are next to me; eg a guy coughs in the row behind me and I think he is about to spit in my ear!

Probably sorted this out just at the right time!