I Like My Hearing Aids, but Lace is Amazing!

I'd been wearing my Phonaks for a couple of months when I started using the LACE (Listening And Communication Enhancement) program that Anita had given me. I was skeptical that it would be of benefit but found the exercises challenging, so I persisted. After several sessions of the "Competing Speaker" exercise, I discovered that if I looked at the silhouette of the man, woman or child on the screen, I could understand the target voice much better. This surprised me, as nothing had changed as far as my hearing aids or ears were concerned; it was simply my focused attention that made the difference. The other discovery which really surprised me was in the "Rapid Speech" exercises. Although I had chosen the subject of the conversation from the list provided, there were many times when I did not understand and could not even guess what had been said. However, after reading what was said and replaying the sentence, i could hear clearly and understand it perfectly what, moments before, was unintelligible. All I can say is, hearing has a lot to do with brain function as well as ear function! Although I didn't expect that I had performed very well on the course of exercises, I was happily surprised to learn from Anita on my follow-up visit that I had improved greatly is some areas during the 20 day LACE program. Encouraged, I have begun to continue with further LACE sessions.