1 in 50,000: February 2019

*I wrote this post before my audiology appointment but didn't publish it in time as such I've added comments in blue to show what I learnt from the appointment*

In a previous post I mentioned that I was trialing a Cochlear BAHA 5 after being told that Phonak would not be repairing the bone conductor hearing aid I had been wearing after 2020, unfortunately that wasn't the whole story. The whole story is that they would have only repaired it if they still had any of the required parts. I know this because my Phonak hearing aid broke and when the audiology department sent it away to be repaired Phonak just came back and said they weren't going to repair it as they didn't have the parts anymore. Fortunately I have adapted well to the BAHA on a soft band but I feel very sorry for people who are not able to this forced change especially older people who may struggle to adapt to an entirely new system with different controls and advanced functionality like only being able to change the volume on a phone app.

Thankfully it has become clear that I can definitely live with the BAHA 5 and it is not a downgrade in sound quality. That said there are some issues I'm still having though I may be able to tweak or fix some of these at my next appointment:

Feedback, for some reason the BAHA 5 can't handle certain noises or frequencies that my much older hearing aids had no issue with. It mainly seems to be high pitches and I get feedback during certain moments when watching TV shows or hearing background music. I also have to turn the BAHA down when playing guitar but that doesn't fix the problem completely which is very frustrating.
I brought this up in the appointment and the audiologist has added a music program onto the BAHA. It seems to take a few seconds to adjust but it seems to have fixed the issue in terms of playing guitar. I can now play both my acoustic and electric guitars without constant feedback or having to turn the BAHA itself way down.
Wind, the microphone on the BAHA seems either to be more exposed or much more sensitive to wind than my old hearing aids. I need to see about getting the "wind" program put on it again but it didn't seem to make a massive difference when I had my first trial.
The wind program has been added and seems to make a bit of a difference but I think it is unfortunately a downside that the BAHA is just going to be more sensitive to wind than my old aid.
Battery life, this isn't a major issue and nothing you can do about it but it's definitely nowhere near as good as my old hearing aids and hopefully something that can be improved in future models especially for people like me to listen to music a lot through the mini mic accessory.
Poor sound quality on the other side. With my old hearing aid the microphone was on the left side so I normally tried to walk on the right of people or sit on the right at dinner with my family. That said it seems like it is even more of an issue with the BAHA. I really struggle to hear people on my left side especially in a noisier environment. Obviously I can try and stay on the left of people now (the BAHA is all one bit and it's on my right side of my head now). There is also the option of getting bilateral BAHAs (one for each side of my head).
After talking with the audiologist we are going to see about me getting a second BAHA so I can have one for either side of my head and also it would mean if one broke I wouldn't be without a backup. My audiologist did say that the BAHA is more directional than my old aid so it makes sense that there is more of a difference. Given that unlike many people who have BAHAs I'm don't just have Single Sided Deafness so it makes sense for me to have bilateral BAHAs.

I have my follow up appointment at the audiology department soon and will be able to speak with the representative from Cochlear about these issues. I will admit that I am more open to the idea of getting the actual implant for the BAHA and getting it done under local anesthetic but I would need to think a lot more about it and I would want to try the other brand-Oticon first before making that decision. I quite like being able to just completely take my hearing aid off and not have anything at night, I'm also a bit worried about having what essentially is an open wound especially with my sensitive skin and the reports of infections on the BAHA Facebook groups. That said like with most things you only hear the complaints, not all the people who have no issues.

The BAHA 5 does have some definite plus points over my old hearing aid:

It is all contained in one unit, no longer have a unit either side of my head connected by a wire. So this means you can have bilateral BAHAs. The lack of a wire is also good because I always seemed to have an issue with either sweat or moisture (despite drying my hair very thoroughly) which resulted in the wire turning a lovely green colour due to a discharge from the hearing aid (presumably harmless, never had any issues and the audiologist and Phonak never made any comments about it when they looked at it).
I got the Mini Mic 2+ accessory with it and it has the advantage of being a lot smaller than the FM system I used with my digital Phonak hearing aid. It connects to the BAHA via bluetooth and the sound quality seems very good, you can also change the volume on the mini mic itself. I don't need to use it as a microphone but I connect audio devices (Ipod, laptop etc.) to it using a standard audio cable and it works very well. My one criticism of it is that for whatever reason they designed it so that it has a flashing power light which is very irritating if it is in your eye line.
If you have an IPhone you can stream audio directly to the BAHA without any accessories including phone calls. I really hope that we get this functionality with Android phones at some point. Obviously you can use speaker phone but the BAHA doesn't like things being held close to it and it results in feedback.