hearingaid

Today, I played basketball for the first time since I arrived in Berkeley. It was a lot of fun, and I was at Berkeley’s Rec Sports Facility for 1.5 hours. Unfortunately, I also received a sobering reminder that my water resistant hearing aids are not actually water resistant.

My Oticon Sensei hearing aids worked great for about half an hour … then I heard that all-too-familiar beeping sequence in both ears, and then a few minutes later, the hearing aids stopped working. So I didn’t have any hearing and had to rely on various body language cues and last-resort tactics (honed over the years) to understand what others were saying. Fortunately, in basketball, communication among players in game situations tends to be blunt and simple and from experience, I’ve learned what players typically say to each other.

It is not uncommon for my hearing aids to stop working while I’m engaging in some physical activity. In fact, I get surprised if my hearing aids last through a session of pickup basketball. Thus, I already knew that I would have to reduce the amount of sweat near my hearing aids. I tried using my shirt and the gym’s towel cloth to absorb some of it, but they can only help out so much.

I understand that water resistant does not mean water proof, but I just cannot fathom how a water resistant hearing aid stops functioning after a half hour of physical activity. Out of curiosity, I re-checked my manual and it states that the Oticon Sensei has an IP57 classification. This means that it was still able to function properly after being immersed in water for 30 minutes at a depth of 1 meter.

I am somewhat surprised, because 30 minutes is about the time it took for the hearing aids to stop working after playing basketball. Oh well. At least I have a functional hearing aid dryer. Within a few hours after arriving home, I had them working. But it’s still incredibly annoying. Honestly, the biggest problem with hearing aid breakdowns is not the lack of communication on the court, but what happens off the court. Between pickup games, players are constantly talking to each other about who should be playing the next game or what they want to do after basketball’s over. A more important issue is that I drive to the gym, and driving without working hearing aids is something I would rather avoid.