Dear Kelly,
In addressing you, I recognize that you work as part of a team; yourself, Pavel and the “girls” on the desk (I have not yet met the new lady). However, it was your expertise that I now plan to speak of with gratitude.
Long before I realised that deafness was encroaching, I made some studies on sound in a more general sense, to assist me in my work with telephones.
I spent virtually all my life with PMG’s Dept. then with Telstra, largely as a supervisor for the installation of customer equipment.
Early on Tinnitus began to trouble me, then hyperacusis or was it recruitment, I was never sure. Either way I attempted to control noises and was given much help by Graham Gartshore, the then manager at Modbury office of Australian Hearing Services.
I often met with a lecturer at the Adelaide University who gave my idea of an aid to hearing, to his electrical engineering students, as a project of several years.
The aid was based upon industrial ear muffs that included a filter to remove the troublesome frequency and of course a controllable amplifier. By the time this was ready, the muffs were no longer capable of adequate passive rejection of the problem frequency.
You might understand then that with varying levels of success, I have contended with nauseous headaches caused by the wrong noises, tinnitus and a growing deafness for about forty years.
Pavel fitted me with aids that made a momentous improvement to my lifestyle, a little more than a year ago.
Wearing the aids with the changes to the left side has resulted in further improvement.
I had not before, recognised my imbalance, but having lunch today in a shopping centre, I suddenly realised I was not cringing inwardly. My ears felt in balance, multiple voices were no longer a nasty noise, but almost pleasant. It was certainly pleasing to feel ‘normal’.
Of course after so long, normal is not.
I think you will understand that it is almost too good to be true.
Thank you!
