The holidays are behind us and, for many people with hearing loss, there is a sense of relief that it will be another year before they will have to struggle to follow the conversations at loud family gatherings or noisy holiday parties. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that people with hearing loss don’t enjoy spending holiday time with family and friends. However, many people don’t realize that someone with hearing loss works at least twice as hard in these situations as someone with normal hearing.
For the last three years, Pacific Hearing Service in Los Altos has hosted a Hear for the Holidays campaign to offer the gift of better hearing to one deserving person. We ask our patients to nominate someone special who could use a little boost in hearing care.
This year, the winner of our Hear for the Holidays campaign is a truly special individual. We’d like to tell you about Joe Kirby. Joe is a highly decorated Vietnam Veteran/Ranger who served two tours of duty. He received the Silver Star Medal for Valor after a helicopter he and others had just exited was shot down. He rescued the injured chopper pilot and door gunner. All others had been killed in the crash. He carried the door gunner through the bush, evading the enemy while leading the other survivors for five weeks until they were rescued. During that time, he was listed as MIA and possibly KIA (killed in action). Following his active-duty time, Joe continued to serve as an officer in the reserves, working to keep the U.S. safe and leading important infrastructure responses following Bay Area natural disasters. After the active-duty military, he served again as a career-decorated law enforcement officer in both Santa Clara and San Mateo counties. He is also featured in a recently aired documentary on PTSD in Vietnam Veterans.
His work in the military and law enforcement took a toll on his hearing. He came to Pacific Hearing Service with good hearing aids made by one of the top hearing aid manufacturers. However, he was not hearing well with them. He had not received the professional programming and care he needed.
Many people are unaware that the best hearing aids are highly sophisticated miniature computers that can be programmed quite precisely for an individual’s specific hearing loss. They also need regularly scheduled professional cleaning and care.
The benefit a person receives from their hearing aids can be severely limited if they are not programmed to maximize benefit. It is also common for ear wax or other debris to clog the microphones and speakers of hearing aids so that sound becomes muffled. We are happy to say our team was able to thoroughly clean and perform an electroacoustic evaluation of his devices to make sure they were working within specifications. His PHS audiologist then reprogrammed his hearing aids via “real ear” measurements, an assessment technique that measures the exact amount of amplification that occurs within an individual’s ear canals. We are happy to say Joe came into the office hearing “okay” with his hearing aids but left the office hearing great. His gift of hearing is a year of complimentary service at either of our offices.
Many people don’t realize what a difference professional care of their hearing aids can make. We encourage anyone who wears hearing aids to contact their hearing healthcare provider for professional cleaning and electroacoustic evaluations regularly.
In addition, a hearing evaluation every one or two years is important since all digital hearing aids can be reprogrammed to compensate for changes in hearing.
It’s amazing what a little extra care can do.
Deborah Clark, Au.D., is a co-owner and clinical audiologist at the Los Altos Pacific Hearing Service branch. For more information, visit pacifichearingservice.com.
