Why won't Grandma and Grandpa wear their hearing aids? That's the question about aging I hear the most. It comes before nursing homes, living wills, who's leaving what to whom, as children in the sandwich generation face the cost of sending their kids to college and their parents to the old folks' home.

The old folks have their reasons for not wearing hearing aids. When you start to wear glasses, you see better right away. With hearing aids, you often hear worse. Or better and worse at the same time.

Most of the hearing aids I have bought amplify everything. You may hear more than you want: the upstairs toilet flushing, the dog scratching, a couple fighting, or worse -- making up in the next steak-house booth.

Hearing aids may show how old you are. They are expensive and are rarely covered by any health plan.

They are often uncomfortable. Take a 1-inch square of cheddar cheese. Warm it in your hands. When it gets squishy, shove it in your ear. Make your hands tremble as mine do and then try to fit tiny batteries into a straw -- before coffee.

After I stopped wearing my hearing aids, I was reading lips even when I was talking to a low-cut lady. More and more of my friends mumble, and I missed my cronies' morning jokes -- there might have been a new one. I thought my best friend asked me to go to the bathroom with her. She didn't. I didn't hear the horn the driver heard just in time.

I took my hearing aids to the man who sold them to me. He said they were fine. I stuffed them in my pocket and reluctantly made an appointment with Dana Fiske, a doctor my friends went to.

He introduced me to a new open-air technology. I didn't have to have cheddar cheese jammed in my ears. All I had in each ear was an invisible wire with a hearing basket that was the size of a tiny pea. Above my ear was a tiny, light clamshell. Suspicious but fascinated, I began the 60-day trial period.

It lasted half a day. My friends stopped mumbling. I could look people in the eye -- or elsewhere. I answered questions asked from the last row in a workshop. I heard the birds sing.

By The Boston Globe
http://www.boston.com/yourlife/articles/2006/04/11/i_cant_hear_you_ive_got_cheese_in_my_ear/