A day at the coalface, Fitting the Widex Clear 440 Fusion.

The last month has been pretty hard going, we have been really busy and I seem to be spending more time in my car than with my family. Whilst with my kids that might not be a bad thing, no I jest. When I get particularly tired and cranky, I think to myself, “Why am I doing this again?”.

Since I became the Sales Manager of Widex Ireland I have found too few opportunities to sit with a real live Patient, roll my sleeves up and do what I love best, help them hear better. Thanks to Chris Delahunt of Celtic Hearing in Newbridge, one of our retail customers, I got this opportunity today.

So considering the length of time since I entered the fray, you may appreciate I was a bit nervous, especially since it was my first fitting of the Clear 440 Fusion in anger. One of Chris’s Patient’s had decided to order a binaural set of Fusions with an accompanying M Dex. The lady, a pretty and vivacious young woman, but I digress, had been struggling with a cookie bite type loss for several years.

She had been wearing a binaural set of CICs for some time, but it had become clear to herself and Chris that it was time to consign them to the drawer. The lady in question leads an active and varied lifestyle, but felt that her decreasing ability to communicate was definitely causing her lifestyle issues. She also works in a difficult sound environment where she needs to be able to communicate.

Again as with so many other people, communication on a mobile phone and indeed a landline proved difficult. We went through her fitting, expanding the sensogram to take account of the relatively good thresholds at 125, 250, 6K and 8K. Again as with so many other fits before, both I and Chris were taken aback with the disparity between the recorder supra aural hearing threshold results and the in situ sensogram results. In some frequencies it was 15 dB.

Whilst I have seen this so many times, it still never fails to surprise me. Once the sensogram and AISA test were undertaken we discussed program and lifestyle needs adding two extra programmes and the smart toggle phone plus programme. We then moved to fine tuning, of which again thanks to the sensogram there was very little. I un-linked and optimised the Master 2 programme for the difficult enviroment that the lady works in, that was really the size of it.

I then matched the RC Dex and the M Dex, we closed out the fitting and then started to match the M Dex to her mobile phone and demonstrate it. I talked over the M Dex with her, I happened to mention that you could stream audio from an IPod or other audio device. She said that she didn't listen to music when she went for her regular walks because she could not hear it. I attached my IPhone and played some music.

I can truly say that the way that lady’s face lit up made my day perfect. She was really pleased with the M Dex and her sudden ability to hear music. Chris then gave her mobile a call and I showed her how to answer the call on the M Dex, she was impressed with the number display on the M Dex screen and appeared to be completely blown away by the sudden sound quality of the phone call.

Again that face lit up, I may not come down for a week you know, even a speeding ticket could not burst my bubble. I left her with Chris to finalise the details after that, but the whole experience brought something home to me. Something that whilst I had not forgot it, it had faded slightly, the simple joy of bringing hearing and the ability to engage on a simple human level without difficulty.

So the moral to this probably rambling post is this, we everyday help people, we help them to engage with the world around them. More importantly we help them engage with their loved ones, remember that thought every time you ask yourself, “Why am I doing this again?” And bask in the radiated joy when it works.

Oh I also plan to follow up on my erstwhile Patient vicariously through Chris, so I will keep you informed on her progress.