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my 80 year old mother says that she still can't hear the tv with two new digital hearing aids?- talk to me.

I can't prove that she can't hear properly with them but I know that she doesn't like wearing them and the audiologist sighed when I told her this.I guess therefore that this is a common problem with old ladies. The pattern at present is that Mum will sulk for a week or so with the sound down when I am in the house and then she will break out again and forget and start talking to me with the sound blaring in the background and I can't take that anymore-eventually I am going to simply walk.When I tackled her she simply angrily dismissed the problem and has turned a deaf 'un to my suggestion of getting an induction loop from social services;precisely what she said was that it was not worth having the tv on at all,meaning with the sound at normal levels which she can't hear and subtitles. The background to all this is Mum's insistence that my illness is of no consequence and that only hers matters because of her age;suggestions and no bollocks about her age;I have rights as well

Public Comments

1. Break the volume knob off the TV so she can't turn it up all the way. She is set in her ways and there isn't much you can do about it. If she won't wear the hearing aids properly, either move out or learn to live with it.
2. no matter how aggravating it becomes, we have to find it within ourselves to be patient with old people. God only knows what shape we will be in IF we even live that long. At least she still has a "thinking" mind !
3. Sometimes there are permanent surgical correction options to hearing loss. If she really can't hear the TV with well programmed high power digital hearing aids, she may be a cochlear implant candidate. However, I expect from your language you are somewhere in the UK where there is (I've heard) a five year waiting list for cochlear implants for adults. Just what I've read in various online news articles, don't know if it is true or not.
4. If her speech discrimination ability is poor, then no hearing aids will completely satisfy her; you both need to have realistic expectations and realize that hearing aids are just that: aids. They don't correct hearing loss and they don't repair 80 years worth of damage and deterioration to her auditory nerve. She can probably hear the TV just fine, but she can't understand what they're saying. The TV is a tricky obstacle. If she doesn't like closed captions then you really should look into inductive loop or FM systems. That can save you a lot of aggravation since the sound will be delivered through her aids instead of blasting everybody through the speakers. The tough part will be getting her to actually wear her aids though, it sounds like. In the end, with whatever happens you cannot force her to wear her hearing aids. She has to own her hearing loss and believe that she needs the aids. Otherwise she won't wear them and you'll just stress yourself out even more. Good luck!