hearing loss/hearing aids/tinnitus/the like (it fucking sucks)

I really wish I had worn ear plugs at that Ghost show I went to in 2004. The absolute worst my ears have felt after a concert. Young and dumb.

Now I’m old and can’t help but double post.

Depends on the concert. For Sunn 0))) the other week I took them out and put in ear plugs. Lost some of the harsh frequencies that kicked in towards the end, but it's all about the low end with them anyway.
Jazz/small club gigs, I just leave my hearing aids in most of the time. Might turn the volume down a little but it's been good with them in.

pulsatile tinnitus. so, along with the ringing that i always have, i now hear my pulsing heartbeat in one ear.

hmmm this might be what happened to me in my left ear after a particularly brutal Gary Numan show, probably 6-8 years ago now?

Picked mine up today. Found it strangely fascinating though I also feel a bit weird and self-conscious. Typing on my keyboard sounds too loud at the moment and the clock in the hospital room sounded too intrusive. Currently testing whether music sounds different and am definitely hearing things I've never heard before.

A Notwist song sounded too busy for me, today.

Also, I'm prone to doing big sad sighs and they suddenly sound a bit epic.

My perception of the world around me did shift when I started using them. Not good or bad, but different. Most alarmingly was my own voice sounds different to me now.

I feel like I'm having to turn my down quite often ... like the world is too loud.

Was away on holiday [for most of my first couple of weeks of having them] and found wearing hearing aids fairly normal but at home and more "real life", I'm finding the adjustment weirder, I think mostly related to using the phone and finding them loud or perhaps just different.

But every now and then I'll think something like "The Microphones in 2020"! I've only heard that a bit deaf ... and feel a bit of joy as to what I might discover.

Even though I'm only wearing them to compensate for a small bit of hearing loss, I do (for the most part) slightly miss them when I take them off ... in a way that I hadn't really anticipated.

Isn’t that weird? It’s like you don’t know what you are missing, but you miss it when it’s gone.

I ended up trialing a new device, now using a ReSound RU961. It has much better Bluetooth connectivity than the Widex ones. And just generally a nicer app and more options for tinnitus relief (which still don’t relieve very much, but at least there are options). Of course these are a couple of hundred bucks more.

"It’s like you don’t know what you are missing, but you miss it when it’s gone."

Yeah, that. I wasn't absolutely certain that I needed them (and maybe don't * need * them much of the time). I'd kind of imagined wearing them occasionally without really noticing that I needed to wear them a lot (to get used to them).

my hearing loss is pretty severe, but I wear mine all waking hours (unless it’s a day off work and I’m just drinking coffee in the morning or something). the difference in QOL is insane

remembering to bring my earplugs to watch basketball at the bar tonight, places are so loud nowadays

I'm really terrible at wearing mine consistently. Watching TV or a movie and long car trips is pretty much it, and even then I sometimes forget.