"You don't know what you know until you know it"

And also "You don't know what you don't know until you know what you didn't know before."

This is why people say "Hindsight is better than foresight".

For example, even though I loved my first wife a lot I was only 24 or 26 when I got together with her. However, my parents could see this would not be a long term relationship except maybe as friends and we still are friends even though today it's 2024 and I met her in 1973 or 1972 around there.

In the case I'm referring to in this article it's about hearing aids. I knew what I knew over the last 10 years or so. 

I had been corralled by my wife and 3 daughters to tell me in an intervention that I needed to get hearing aids. I didn't want hearing aids for many reasons then. However, the best reason they gave me for getting hearing aids was so I would be less likely to suffer from dementia caused by hearing loss and the isolation that hearing loss can bring at least socially to your life.

So, for me, that was the deciding factor of why I started wearing hearing aids.

However, that was 7 to 10 years ago now. And lately I was worried more and more about hearing loss but specifically I was worried about my tinnitus that seemed to be getting worse to the point where listening to people talk was more like being at the ocean with the waves breaking next to you and trying to have an in depth conversation with someone which isn't easy. So, this was my experience often talking to my friends and relatives and my wife. And my wife was getting progressively more frustrated in getting me to hear what she was saying.

So, I wanted to try to address my tinnitus because a Doctor of Audiology locally was advertising on TV that they had some cures for tinnitus. So, I made an appointment last Friday and I brought my wife to help me hear better what they were saying. It isn't that you cannot hear it's that you might miss a key word in a sentence.

Let me give you an example: IF you said to me: John went to the store and bought some apples."

What if you heard like I might: "----- went to the store and bought some apples." Or even worse what if you heard instead "---- went to the store and bought some -----.

What are you going to do? If you are embarrassed like I often am at this point if your survival doesn't depend upon this information you will let it go because it isn't worth bothering people enough to knos this information in the first place.

But, what if that information was important for some other reason that you don't presently know about like your wife is going to make an apple pie with those apples. Then you not only not know that John bought Apples you also don't know that your wife is going to make a pie with those apples. Then when she bakes the pie and wants you to have some you  might have no idea what is going on and then she is hurt you didn't know about the apples or the pie. And the list goes on and on in this respect.

However, I do have an 81 year old friend who has hearing loss who is single and refuses to get hearing aids. So, I'm very lucky at the 4 women in my life (wife and 3 daughters) sat me down 7 to 10 years ago to tell me I needed hearing aids and so I got them.

However, I still didn't know much about hearing aids except for the fact that I went through the normal "hearing hallucinations" I call them as you try to figure out what you are listening to beyond human voices. Because outside of the human voices that hearing aids are making better everything else sounds different than it did before. So, often you might have no idea what you are hearing when you have hearing aids on either until you decipher what the new electronic sounds are too.

Well. Friday I found out that I could have 90% better hearing than I did and I do now. 

However, these incredibly sophisticated computerized hearing aids also cost around 8000 dollars too.

However, if you could afford it wouldn't you want your hearing to be 90% better than regular hearing aids which cost around 2000 to 3000 dollars for a pair of them.

The other thing I like about my upper end Phonak hearing aids is these are completely automatic and mostly I can turn them on or off. So, if a sound is going to hurt my ears that hearing aids automatically compress those sounds so my ears aren't damaged.

Before when a fire engine went by I had to rip my hearing aids out of my ears to save my hearing. Now, instead if a fire engine or ambulance goes by I might put my hand over my ears but I no longer have to protect my ears that much from most loud sounds. Also, I can now be in my bedroom and hear my wife talking to me down the hall all the way into the kitchen or dining room or living room. I couldn't do any of this before. 

So, it's sort of like when I had my hypothyroid condition diagnosed in 2006 when I thought I would be dead by 60 or 65 because I couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. I have a whole new wonderful life better than I did before where I can hear 90% better than I did before.

Note: By the way if you want to see if you have a hypothyroid condition there is a simple T3 blood test and also a T4 blood test that will tell you if you are hypothyroid or not. end note.

However, it took me 10 years of various hearing aids to get to a pair of advanced ones that actually addressed my tinnitus at the source in order to get here now to a really wonderful place. 

So now I have a pair of really advanced Phonak hearing aids which have completely changed my life in many different ways. So, Thank God!