Eh?

655.7; 18.5

Hearing aid fitting appointment today.

I have trouble hearing soft sounds, and individual sounds with a lot of background noise, and at work, I was having a LOT of trouble understanding people with heavy accents. Analyzing this last, I felt that it might be the different emphasis on different syllables common to some ESL speakers.

So, I went to get my hearing tested three months ago, while I was still employed and fully insured. These people thought they could do something for me, and they said it would cost $2500, with $500 going to me. I paid the $500, and was laid off the next week. At the point of being laid off, I would have canceled the whole thing except for the fact that it was already paid for, and I was pretty certain there was no way I was gonna get that $500 back.

So I waited.... and waited... How long does it take to prepare a hearing aid for a person? They didn't take a plaster cast of my inner ear or anything! Finally, about a month in, I called them, and they informed me that they were waiting for payment from the insurance company.

So I waited... and waited... FINALLY, last week, they called me to make an appointment for a fitting, and I went in today (1111 Sonoma Ave., Santa Rosa, hence Monday's 1111 blog entry title, and the ride to scout for a bike rack).

After sitting in a tiny room for 20 minutes with nothing to do, hooked up by a wire to a laptop, the doc (or audiologist?) came in and ran a few test wherein I could barely ascertain any difference between the hearing aids' being on or off, and when it was on, there was a tinny reverb-y sound to everything he or I said. Okay fine. It surely would take some getting used to, and they usually try to set it low and move it up gradually, so I was ushered out to make an appointment for a couple of weeks hence.

At that appointment, the woman nonchalantly added, "and eight hundred fifty-three thirty-five" or something to that effect.

Had I not been wearing a hearing aid, I wouldn't have believed my ears! Still I had her repeat it.

Upshot, she will run it by the insurance company again--"sometimes they are wrong"--and get back to me, so at least I get a brief reprieve, but jeeze! Eight Hundred Dollars is not small change, especially for the underemployed. And I don't really even need the damned things anymore, for now--the reasons I originally went are all but absent from my life now!

On the ride home, the wind noise was amplified so much I couldn't hear anything else.

On the lighter side, as of the end of this excursion, I have officially biked 1006 miles, in 87 days. Whoopee.