Loan Basis
As an eligible VA patient, you may be entitled to a hearing aid(s).
These are given to patients on an “indefinite loan” basis.
Please do not throw out your old or broken hearing aids. Any
hearing aids you no longer use should be returned to the Audiology
Clinic nearest you. Returned hearing aids are sent to the Denver
Distribution Center where they are recycled for parts and repairs.
Hearing Loss and Its Effects
It is common for adults to have some hearing loss. The older we
get, the poorer our hearing becomes. Hearing loss usually begins
gradually with certain words sounding soft, muffled and/or distorted.
This change often makes listening a difficult task, especially in noisy
areas.
People with hearing loss often feel that they can hear fine but
cannot understand what is being said. In most cases, people with
hearing loss have more difficulty hearing high pitch sounds. The
consonants s, z, f, v, sh, and th, are difficult to hear if you have high
pitch hearing loss.
If a person hears low pitches normally, he/she usually hears
vowel sounds normally. This is why many people feel that they can
hear fine. But when a person only hears vowel sounds, they are not
hearing enough of the word to understand it. This makes speech
sound like it is being mumbled.
Hearing aids and speechreading may be able to help you with this
type of hearing loss. These tools will help you understand conversa-
tions better. Unfortunately, hearing aids can’t make us hear as well as
when we were younger but they do improve our hearing and allow us
to hear more than we could before using them.
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