The Follow-Up Visit

This visit with your audiologist is the most exciting! You have had a couple of weeks to learn about your hearing aids, what to expect, what you’re hearing better, and, more importantly, where you are still struggling. Now is the time for the two of you to revisit those listening goals and make adjustments as necessary.

Your audiologist will want to know everything about your experiences, from little things (how long are the batteries lasting?) to the heavy stuff (were you able to enjoy church last Sunday?). Did you keep a journal or make notes? Show them to him or her and allow your audiologist the time to study them. He or she will likely find a trend or a theme. What will seem like the need for multiple hearing aid adjustments is often one or two simple changes. If the audiologist makes significant programming adjustments to your hearing aids, he or she might do some extra verification or testing to ensure the settings are still on target.

It is also at this visit that the two of you will talk about expectations and adaptation. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and it takes more than a couple of weeks to adapt to new hearing aids. You have set goals, and by now you should have a pretty clear understanding of how much improvement you should reasonably expect in each of the listening situations you identified as being most important. Use this visit to learn how long you should expect it to take each of your goals to develop, and what those stages of development should be.

You will also learn about aural rehabilitation exercises you can do to speed up the adaptation process. For a few ideas, read this first, then this. Your journey to better hearing has now begun in earnest, and you have made a large investment of both time and money. Make the most of it by exercising that auditory system to achieve maximum benefits!