My Muffled Golden Years

My name is Ron Peck. I'm retired, 71 years old, married to my wife, Jan, for 35 years. Hearing loss has been a challenge. There was a certain amount of time before I realized my hearing loss was at the point where I needed help. There are situations that I would probably think to myself, uh, this isn't good. I didn't hear that very well. Everybody else seemed to be fine, but you didn't make it. It's one of those things where you finally recognize, one day the light comes on, and you say, all right, I really do need to do something about this. Right after I was checked for the very first time, it was blatantly obvious that I needed hearing aids. There wasn't any question about it. When I first got my hearing aids, I hardly wore them at all. I hated them. They weren't comfortable. I didn't necessarily think they were doing the job. We didn't know any better, and figured that, well, we can go to this place and get hearing aids and not pay a lot of money for them. But they also weren't very good. But the ones that I have now are about, in my opinion, about as good as you can get. I've realized that this is the device that will help me, and I'm going to use it as much as technology will allow. You don't really realize what's happening for a long time, until all of a sudden you get hearing aids, and you find out what a dramatic difference it makes in your own life. The first time I got hearing aids of any significance, and we went walking out on Town Lake, I could actually hear the gravel under my feet. And I thought that was so strange. I can hear my friends better when I talk to them. I can hear Jan better. We have chickens. I can hear the chickens clear out in the chicken coop, which I never could hear before. It boils down to a basic quality of life. I don't think there's any way to measure what I would be losing if I didn't have hearing aids.