Hearing aids in the desert

It is surprising to find that my digital hearing aids coped really well in the desert, with daily temperatures of 45c on average, topping out at 48c. Meanwhile, a package containing an Intel Xeon 3.8Ghz processor chip was left in the sun before it was known to us – while it worked ok, it would hard crash randomly on a static computer system.

Dust proved to be more of a problem, building up around the ear moulds, clogging up the microphone and getting in the way of switches and battery contacts. Out here, it definitely need attention at least twice a day.

In the Saharan Libyan desert, the humidity is very low, at around 7-11%, I’ve not had to remove moisture from the moulds at all, and with the heat, sweat is evaporating as soon as it appears so my hearing aids remain bone dry.

Which leads me onto the batteries – they last an astonishingly long time out here, I’ve only replaced the batteries once for each hearing aids in two and a half weeks, and that’s wearing them constantly for about 18 hours a day. This contrasted with maybe four days back home in the UK with less usage as I sleep more at home! The low power drain is such that I can go for days with warning beeps before having to change, whereas back in the UK, it goes dead very quickly and sometimes without warning.

Meanwhile, according to Grumpy Old Deafies, an article appeared in the Times newspaper suggesting that hearing aids should be treated like glasses and therefore a paid-for service. I think it is crazy – an assumption is made that hearing aids are a 100% effective correction device like glasses when they are nowhere near that – while I do hear with hearing aids, even at £275 each for analogue would make me think twice about bothering to have any at all (never mind the running costs of owning them). Leave comments on that blog if you have on an opinion about it.