Do hearing aids still stink?
At 41 years old, I've been hard of hearing in both ears my whole life. As a kid in the 90s I had the hearing aids that wrapped behind the ear. It was hot, itchy, and screamed in my ear all the time and couldn't stand wearing them. As a teen, I had a more inconspicuous model that just rested in the ear canal, same problem. They just physically made my skin crawl.
But what was also unbearable to me was just how LOUD everything was. I swear I couldn't hear voices any better because every single background noise was also amplified into white noise that drowned out speech. So hot, itchy, wax-sticky, and ineffectual was my experience back then. Is that still the case now? Did it just take a while to train yourself to actually tolerate them? My hearing is just getting worse in my middle age and I'm tired of irritating the $&#^ of of my friends, family, and coworkers asking them to repeat themselves all the time.