How to Stop Losing Your Hearing Aids
Modern technology and advances can be life-changing. If you’re struggling with hearing loss, hearing aids may be a vital and invaluable part of your everyday life. With those advancements in technology, hearing devices are becoming smaller and more inconspicuous all the time. While this can have many positives, unfortunately, it can also make these valuable tools easier to lose. Fortunately, we have some preventative measures and recommendations to help ensure you don’t spend any more time searching for lost hearing aids.
How to Avoid Losing Your Hearing Aids: Routine
This may be easier said than done but to avoid losing your hearing aids, try to keep a consistent routine. For example, you wake up every morning and retrieve your hearing aids from their case on your bedside table or when you take a shower, you return them to the case to ensure they are safe from moisture. Your hearing aids case always remains in the same place. You follow a similar pattern of taking them out and putting them away every day. Establishing these routines and habits will help you in preventing losing your hearing devices.
If you do have to veer from your routine and are worried you may forget where you put them, try saying out loud to yourself; “my hearing aids are in the bowl on the kitchen table.” You could also enlist help from a family member by mentioning where you may have left them. Additionally, there’s the option of using your electronic device to make a note of where you place your hearing aid each time. There are also some “Find My Hearing Aid” apps available on smartphones to help you find your missing hearing aids.
Tip for How to Prevent Losing Hearing Aids: Safe Storage
Safe storage is another key factor in always keeping your hearing aids safe to prevent the difficult and sometimes costly experience of replacing your hearing aids. A padded hearing aid container or dehumidifier box is best for safe storage and to stop the chance of losing your hearing aids. This way you always know that even when your hearing aids are not in your ears, they are safe. We can’t tell you how many times we’ve heard things like, “I just took them out and put them on a napkin in my kitchen for a few minutes,” or “the batteries ran out so I put them in my pocket.” These seemingly harmless actions frequently end with a napkin tossed in the trash or a pair of pants thrown in the washing machine.
If you experience hearing aid loss, remain calm and retrace your steps. Take your time and think of where you last had them. If you live with others, enlist their efforts to help look and ensure everyone is aware of what to look for. Most of our hearing devices include loss and damage coverage. When you’ve exhausted your search, call your hearing instrument specialist and see what options you have for replacement.
How People Lose Hearing Aids
We’ve given some examples of how people living with hearing loss might innocently and inadvertently discard their hearing aids. Generally, when people lose hearing aids, it’s not intentional and sometimes it’s not the owner of the hearing aid’s fault. Be mindful of pets and small children as they may be inclined to use your hearing aids as a toy. Verify if your warranty covers incidental damage from pets or children before you go to a hearing healthcare professional for replacements.
Sometimes a loose-fitting hearing aid can be particularly vulnerable to misplacement. Speak to your hearing healthcare professional or hearing specialist like one of our experienced technicians to ensure you have a snug fit in your ears. There’s no great time to have your hearing aid fall out but there are certainly terribly unfortunate times like when near water.
Tips for Caregivers:
When the hearing aid wearer has memory issues, keeping track of hearing aids can be a tall order. However, being able to hear plays such an important role in helping their communication and how they associate with the rest of the world. Living with hearing loss untreated can be very isolating. To help ensure they don’t lose their hearing aids, we suggest using a large colorful pencil box with some padding inside and a picture of a hearing aid on the top. Keep the box in one place to further prevent misplacement. When it is easily visible it serves as a reminder to put hearing aids in and take them out. For those living in care facilities; we highly recommend painting the hearing aids with a bright color. That way, they are more easily spotted if they are misplaced. We also advise the use of hearing aid clips. These tools can help so that hearing aids don’t accidentally fall out and disappear. Hearing aid clips can be inexpensive but worth their weight in gold.
What to Do When You Lose Your Hearing Aids
If you’ve exhausted all of your options and still can’t find your hearing aids, speak with your supplier about replacement options. Warranty coverage can be a huge help in some cases like this to ensure you can return to hearing without additional, significant costs. If you’re proactively wondering about your coverage and are a customer of Southwest Hearing Centers or are interested in our services and offerings, please contact or visit us today.