Do you know the look on a child’s face when they go to Disneyland for the first time? That is the look that my son had on his face for the first 2 days after receiving the new hearing aids.
- Marina Sage, mother of a sixteen-year-old Oticon Opn user.
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Excerpts of an e-mail from a mother of a 16-year-old boy with a hearing loss:
Dear Oticon,
Thank you, thank you, thank you! A million times, thank you for the work that you do improving hearing aid technology!
I am the mother of a 16-year-old son who was born with a bilateral sensorineural hearing loss. In the past 16 years, we have been through many different sets and brands of hearing aids, each new pair helping to improve his hearing just a little bit more.
In June this past year, a new job took us to south Florida, where my son was enrolled in one of the biggest high schools in Florida and in the USA, with around 4800 students. For the most part he did well, but he started complaining for the first time that he couldn’t hear his teachers as well in his larger classes. He couldn’t hear the announcements on the loudspeaker because they were too jumbled. He had difficulty hearing his partners in group projects while tuning out background noise in the classroom.
I remembered a conversation that we had with his audiologists before leaving New Mexico talking about the new Oticon Opn hearing aids. They told me that they had seen some amazing things with their patients who were trying them. They told me they were not just a small step up like we were used to, but it was entirely new technology that was a total game changer.
We contacted a new audiologist in Florida who told us we could do a one-week trial with the Opn hearing aids to see how they worked for my son and if we thought it was worth the investment.
And this is where I start getting teary. The audiologist put in the hearing aids and turned them on. Immediately my son’s eyes lit up and a huge smile formed on his face. The audiologist told him to look out the window because she was going to ask him some questions and wanted to see if he could hear her. First of all, I was amazed that she was speaking in a normal conversational voice, and not in the louder voice that we had been accustomed to speaking to him in. Secondly, she was standing behind him. He always had trouble hearing us unless we were standing right in front of him. Thirdly, we heard his voice go from a louder voice to a normal conversational tone.
Throughout all of this, he was answering her questions without any problem whatsoever. Then, I saw her take another step backwards to the doorway of the room. She kept talking to him, while slowly backing out of the room. My husband and I were listening to the conversation in utter disbelief and watching our son’s face. Then I looked out the door and tears started streaming down my face, because the audiologist wasn’t standing near the doorway anymore, she had moved about 4-5 feet down the hall! This would NEVER have been possible with his other hearing aids.
Do you know the look on a child’s face when they go to Disneyland for the first time? That is the look that my son had on his face for the first 2 days after receiving the new hearing aids.
He just kept looking wide-eyed in awe everywhere we went, listening to the new sounds that the world provided. The whole way home and for the next couple of days, he kept telling us about all of the new things he was hearing.
After wearing them for a full day, he said he was amazed how easy it was to adjust to them since they sounded so different from what he was used to. He decided to try to put on his old hearing aids for fun to see what they sounded like. He immediately took them off and said, “I don’t like these. They sound weird, and they’re so loud!” Naturally, we decided that we had to buy him a pair of the Opn hearing aids, so at the end of that week, he traded in the loaners for his very own brand-new set!
So, how have our lives changed since then?
• At home: He can hear me call him from downstairs. I no longer have to send one of his brothers up to get him. The TV can be played at a normal setting (we did not get the TV box that pairs with the Opn because he could hear so much better already). We have conversations in a normal vocal tone. No more feeling like we are yelling at him all the time. He can hear us talking to him, even when we are in the other room or behind him, or facing away from him, or walking away from him. He doesn’t say “what?” every couple of sentences when someone is talking to him. None of this was possible before.
• At school: He can hear his teachers better and doesn’t need special seating in the classroom. He can hear the announcements and come home to tell me what they said. He is no longer missing out on important information. He is doing great in his group work. He has gained a tremendous amount of self-confidence. He is excelling in his classes without any kind of special accommodations. He is a straight A student, even in his AP classes!
• At restaurants: He used to shut down and stare off into space, especially in louder restaurants like sports bars. Now he is easily able to join in the conversation, even when there is a lot of background noise.
• Overall: He is not as tired at the end of the day. He used to work so hard to hear, and it was exhausting. Now he doesn’t have to work so hard, so he has more energy left at the end of the day. Most importantly, he smiles more—all the time!
This is just one little snippet of our life and how these incredible hearing aids have breathed new life into my son. He has now had them for a couple of months. I’ve been compelled to write this letter but was unable to put my feelings into words. I’m sorry it’s such a long letter, but I wanted you to understand how much you are changing people’s lives.
Sebastian graduates in 2020 and plans to major in mathematics or engineering. Perhaps he will use his knowledge to someday work in the field of hearing aid technology and to help other people as you have helped him.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart,
Marina Sage
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