Hello! My name is Alice and I am a rising senior who is interning with HLAA for the summer. I was assigned to make a blog post on this website to share my experience with hearing loss. As for some context, I was born with moderately severe conductive hearing loss as a result of not having ear canals. I wear a Bone Anchored Hearing Aid, or a BAHA, which is basically a quarter-sized device that rests on the side of my head, right behind my ear (see attached image). Because my hearing aid is not what people would typically think of as what a hearing aid is “supposed” to look like, I consistently get questions on what it is. The question I get the most is “what’s that?”, usually asked by young children, but I get lots of other questions too, including but not limited to: “what kind of headphone is that?”, “is that thing recording me?” or “are they using that to track your sleep or something?”. And it’s not just people with typical hearing asking these questions. A couple months ago, I was spending time with a preteen who also had hearing loss and she asked what my hearing aid was. When I told her it was my hearing aid, she responded “oh, I know what a hearing aid is but the ones I see never look like that.” That moment really stuck with me because it reminded me that hearing aids, like hearing loss itself, are wide in variety and often misunderstood. So, consider this post as a PSA. Hearing aids are not one size fits all. They come in many different shapes, sizes and colors, and are each specifically designed to help the person wearing them. Thanks for reading! And if you’ve ever wondered “what’s that?”, now you know ;-).
