Inspiration for the Trial

I think of hearing aids as an instrument, like my piano. If I were in the market to buy a piano, I would research online and visit the shop I think would have the best suited piano for me. I would give it a test run with a variety of my learned repertoire. My criteria would be a warm tone vs. a “live” sound, a piano with an action that allows me to connect and speak freely and comfortably, with ease. A responsive piano that invites me to play and dive deeper into conversation. That is a great instrument! Then I would continue through testing other makes and models of pianos to see which would best suit my criteria. Finally I would consult my piano tuner to give it the final push: tuning, regulating the action, repair and replacing any parts that need finer details and attention.

This same process and attention to detail should be accessible to everyone for hearing.

I think of my hearing aid as an instrument. I think of my hearing instrument practitioner as my piano tuner and builder. She is the one who knows the mechanics of the instrument, she fine tunes my instrument, regulates it, repairs it and replaces the parts.
– Michèle Wilmot

My Story

Age three was my first visit to have my hearing tested. There were no signs of me speaking and I was referred to a hearing specialist early on. This hearing specialist found everything was moving in the right direction and encouraged my Mom to start me with an instrument. My Mom, being a pianist herself, introduced and taught me piano. Speech never came until I was 4 and a half years old and shipped to a school without my two older brothers to see if this would kickstart my speech. Four months into school I started picking it up with the other students around me. My childhood was earache after earache. Late evening housecalls from our family doctor and trips to the emergency room in the middle of the night. The final big damaging earache came years later when I was expecting my first child. My whole second trimester was a challenge, with an agonizingly sore left ear. After a couple rounds of antibiotics, they put me on something very strong to knock it out. I was told this would not harm the baby but may turn his baby teeth yellow! As it turned out, he ended up with tiny pearly whites and yellow sizzling hair instead.

Ten years later, I woke up one day and noticed I could not hear out of my left ear. It was as though a filter was placed overtop of my ear, and something was blocking the sound. I was referred to a doctor who commented on all the scar tissue present and new scar tissue too. My hearing was right on the margin for my right ear, but the left was quickly falling behind. He commented the hearing loss was not only unilateral, it was all in the low range of the spectrum, again something very odd, most hearing loss occurs in the high ranges. He sent me for an MRI and this came back negative for a tumour. I purchased a hearing aid. We added three programs a general program, one for crowds and a third for tinnitus. I decided to purchase Sony earplugs to protect my hearing from the hours of piano playing I enjoyed daily as a player and teacher. I wore my hearing plugs to practice and used my natural hearing. As my hearing declined, I tried to use my hearing aid to practice and noticed it would distort in the high ranges. My teacher commented my playing did not sound musical with the aid and, instead, kind of strangely mechanical.

So, I abandoned the hearing aid and the plugs and went back to just using the hearing I had left in both ears. This posed other problems: phantom notes my brain could hear but were not actually sounding. Pedalling I thought was grabbing the bass notes and sustaining them but when I asked my teacher he said they were absent. So I started to adapt my practice methods to fix all this too.

The first hearing centre I attended near Wilfrid Laurier University changed; my hearing doctor retired and I lost my instrument specialist. I spoke with my family doctor and he didn’t have any other suggestions, so I started researching and landed at a new centre that was very reputable, where I met my current hearing instrument practitioner. I didn’t use my hearing aid much during the Covid 19 lockdowns and as things opened up I realized my hearing aid no longer worked at all. This was a funny one, the batteries had actually expired! Although this new centre did not support my current hearing aid they were always generous in bringing in the parts I needed free of charge to repair it. Eventually, my instrument specialist told me they could do nothing more for my hearing aid, it wasn’t supported by software anymore and it wasn’t working for me. I felt this was time to start testing new hearing aids.

Then came this opportunity of a lifetime – an email inviting pianists to come to Manhattan New York City’s Klavierhaus to play for Beethoven’s 250th birthday. I recall sitting at the table with the president of our Chapter of the Leschetizky organization telling him about it and who I thought would be a good choice to send to play. His response was “Well what about Michèle Wilmot?”. It never occurred to me as someone hard of hearing, that this could be an option. Five concerts, a whole day marathon, and I’m the only one from Canada. In my group there was a lovely lady from Germany, when we hit the green room, I put my hearing aid in and she commented “I wear hearing aids too”. She was able to wear hers for practice, but she was not wearing them to perform. We had this incredible talk about all these different aids we tried.

That was the turning point, I knew my next step needed to be to learn more and research these hearing aids to find the best suited one for me. I realized at that point not all hearing aids were the same. With the hearing loss I wanted to research options to help me hear during practice and performance. I was still able to connect with audiences and they very much enjoyed my performance, this was the huge motivator for “Listen Up”. I also am in contact with other teachers, amateur pianists and performers who are continually looking for improved hearing solutions too. The COVID19 lockdowns finished and, with my hearing slipping again I was sent to an ear, nose and throat specialist. It would be a year before they would do a CT scan to investigate what was happening again with my hearing. A year is a long time. My sister, having the same bad genetics, decided to do the surgery, a stapedectomy, on May 2023. Results came in from my CT scan February 2024 and my diagnosis was otosclerosis with both ears now having the small bones fused.

What is Otosclerosis?

Otosclerosis is a rare condition that causes hearing loss. It happens when a small bone in your middle ear — usually the one called the stapes — gets stuck in place. Most of the time, this happens when bone tissue in your middle ear grows around the stapes in a way it shouldn’t.

Your stapes bone has to vibrate for you to hear well. When it can’t do that, sound can’t travel from your middle ear to your inner ear. That makes it hard for you to hear.

Source: https://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/ear-infection/otosclerosis-facts

I have been referred to a surgeon now and I am waiting, this could take, I imagine, another very long time. And what if surgery is not for me? My sister knows now she has a deformity in the ear that was worked on and is no longer a candidate for her second ear. She will need two hearing aids. So I decided to investigate these hearing aids and approach them as though I were in the market to purchase an instrument.

For more about Trial 1, check out the Trials page!

The Trials