At The Hearing Care Partnership, we are lucky enough to partner with optical practices who have been helping patients with their vision for many years. This year, our partner BBR Optometry in Hereford, celebrates its 50th year in practice.
In May, BBR also celebrate a 50th achievement in hearing – our Audiologist, Sarah Cain, fitted her 50th patient, Elizabeth Campbell, with hearing aids. Above, Elizabeth (centre) is pictured with our Audiologist, Sarah Cain, and Nick Black, CEO of BBR Optometry. With thanks to Nick Rumney, Chairman of BBR, coming in to take the photo.
Having experienced hearing loss from a young age, Elizabeth recently visited Sarah to have her hearing checked for the first time. Hearing aids can provide a new lease of life to those with hearing loss and for Elizabeth it was like ‘seeing in colour’.
Elizabeth was even kind enough to share her full experience as a patient with us:
“I always knew I had a problem with my hearing but thought it wasn’t bad enough to need hearing aids, it wasn’t until I was 38 that I got my hearing tested. I often struggled to hear if there was background noise or if the person talking to me was not facing me. I often guessed what people were saying or asked them to repeat it multiple times. I am a musician and often struggled to hear the vocals and guitar parts of songs, so I learned to play the bass guitar as I could hear that part best.
After my hearing test, Sarah explained to me that I have a type of hearing loss known as ‘cookie bite’, I misheard and thought she had said cuckoo-bar! Sarah explained that my mid-range hearing is poor and that this condition is congenital – I’ve had it since I was born. Cookie bite hearing loss affects how I hear speech and music.
I decided to go ahead and invest in a pair of hearing aids, Sarah fitted them and explained how to look after them. She showed me how to connect them to my phone so I can listen to music through them and take calls through them too. Hearing via the aids is like seeing in colour, after previously only seeing in black and white. Music has so much more depth. I’m not so tired all the time as I’m not having to focus so much on what people are saying. I’m not constantly saying ‘pardon’ and another good thing is that the hearing aids are very discreet.
I’m finding life that bit easier and enjoying listening to music so much more. If I take my hearing aids off everything is so muted, I don’t know how I ever managed without them!”
At The Hearing Care Partnership we love to hear back from our patients, stories like this are why we do what we do.
If you’d like to find out more about hearing aids you can read all about them here. Alternatively, you can book a free hearing test online to speak to one of our expert audiologists.