Thursday, June 3, 2010

Just a Gator Dude personal story

Thursday.  Not a nice one, either.  This is one of the two days a week I go to my senior fitness session for an hour of various exercises.  Those of you who visit me know that this weather is not nice to me.  What a difference a little weather can make!  Just about all during May my sessions were super, almost pain free because the weather didn't get into my joints.  Now June is here and it seems that mother nature has decided to make up for all the good it did last month.  Oh, well.  I guess that's just life.

I usually take a long ride around my neighborhood, actually my own lawn, on Thursdays and leave the grass just a little shorter as I do.  This week I listened to the weather forecast and took that ride yesterday, instead.  After watching the forecast last night, it's probably a good thing I did.  I could have put it off until tomorrow maybe, but if we do get all the shower activity today we'tr told could be headed our way and without the sun tomorrow to dry it off, I wouldn't be able to mow.

The bagging attachment for my tractor isn't too happy when it gets wet and clogs so I have to wait until it is dry before mowing.  With the possibility of more showers right through Tuesday at least, had I not mowed yesterday it could be late next week before I could get to the task.  Of course the longer it grows, the longer it takes to dry.  I'm sure I wouldn't be very happy when I could get out to it.

Not to worry now, though.  It's done for this week and we'll let next week come when it comes.

Last week I got two new hearing aids.  I was asked to wear them for a week and make note of how they satisfied my hearing needs.  By last weekend, my ability to hear was going downhill and by yesterday, when I was scheduled for that follow up appointment to correct any issues I encountered, I was hearing nothing through the hearing aids.

The audiology person remained cheerful when I expressed my feeling of these new devices.  She was confident whatever was happening, or not happening, could be corrected.  She, of course, can check the devices.  The first thing I saw was a look of consternation on her face.  She heard nothing in her device, either. 

She apologized for not explaining to me how to tell when the battery had died.  The hearing aid emits a little beep.  I already know that because both of the ones I replaced beeped to notify me to change the battery.  I told her there was no beep.  "Hmmm," she said and changed the batteries and again used her equipment to test the device.  She heard nothing.

The second obvious reason for not hearing with an aid would be wax.  Ear wax.  The little transmitter hole in the device was packed solid.  She gave me a lesson on changing the wax trap and with a new one in place, the hearing aids worked perfectly.  But before she returned them to me, she checked my ears.  I did have a little soft wax build up but not enough, she thought, to warrant a visit to the ear doc.  I put my aids back in place and, guess what, I heard nothing.

She looked at them again and sure enough, wax was in that miniscule hole.  She had me demonstrate I understood how to change the trap and then suggested I might want to have a doctor give them a good cleaning.  The ear doctor I use will be on vacation for the rest of June after this week so getting an appointment seemed impossible.

I got lucky.  He was free right then.  The doc shares an office with the audiologist.  So I was cleaned and all the soft wax removed.  He then gave me a lesson on how to keep that soft stuff at bay so I wouldn't have to keep returning. 

I put the hearing aids in place and now once again, I was hearing as I was last week:  better than I've heard for a long time.  The best part is, now I know how to keep both my aids and my ears cleaned. 

Yesterday was a happy day.  Then I had to mow that darn lawn.

GiM

*****Tuesday is Primary Day in Maine.  Please exercise your privilege of government determination by voting.  You may vote with an absentee ballot today, tomorrow or Monday at your local City Clerk's office or other designated place in your city or town; or you can wait and do it Tuesday.  But please, vote.  And if you don't want to pay higher taxes, vote YES on Question One.*****


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