First Day at the Office, 2010

First day back at the office.  My first patient was Janice.  She is a delightful woman who was initially seen at my office, referred to Dr. Rezvani for ENT clearance as she has a mixed hearing loss in her left ear and a perforated eardrum in that ear and returned to my office to be fitted with a Phonak Audeo Yes III RITE with a custom mold.  She agreed to have my office craft a letter stating that she is a satisfied patient of my practice and that she would hope he would consider sending other patients to my office.  The second patient of the day was Betty.  I originally saw Betty back on 7/15/09.  Her story is rather interesting of how she found my practice.  She and her husband moved out to Hampton Bays and were looking for a hearing health care professional to service her Phonak hearing aids (Eleva 411 dAZ).  She called one of my competitors, left a voicemail and did not receive a call back.  Then she went to Phonak’s website and they listed another one of my competitors, who she made an appointment with.  She was not treated very well at all after she got there.  Betty was told “I don’t know much about Phonak”.  She informed my competitor that Phonak’s website lists the business as someone who works with their product.  The response was “I can’t help you”.  Betty was very frustrated (as anyone would be given the circumstances), so she called Phoank and they finally directed her to my office.  She also told them about her unacceptable experience at the other office.  I knew I could help her as soon as I examined her earmolds.  They were really insufficient for her needs.  Betty told me she had 3 separate sets of molds all from the same place!  Her previous audiologist did the only thing possible to counter the feedback; run the feedback manager and reduce the gain.  I took earmold impressions which were overnighted to Microsonic with instructions to perform a same day lab with overnight shipping (Betty has family coming into town and she wanted to have the problem fixed before their arrival).  I saw her 7 days later to be fit with her new earmolds.  I chose M2000 plus, a soft material which does a great job sealing off the ear.  These new molds were fantastic!  After hooking up her present hearing aids, I followed Phonak’s audiology support by running the feedback manager first.  The output limiting curves immediately were raised for both ears, allowing for a significant improvement in gain output without feedback.  Betty was a happy camper after that.  A follow up call several days later produced the best compliment an audiologist can get (I haven’t heard this well in years!)  Back to the present moment..her FM system was sent in to Phonak to be serviced.  It arrived at my office and was sent overnight to her house just before Christmas.  Unfortunately, it does not work with her hearing aids.  There was a horrible static sound whenever it was put into use.  We troubleshot as best we could, and it was determined that the FM system was to blame.  Phonak advised me to send it in for servicing and that they would test it with compatible hearing aids at the factory.  We also ran the feedback manager, as she was starting to get feedback.  Unfortunately, I saw a significant drop in the right ear output limiting curve and I suspected that the earmold wasn’t fitting as well as it should.  So, I took an earmold impression for the right ear to have the earmold remade.  I informed Betty that she would be notified when the FM system returns from being serviced.  The third patient was Mike.  He is one of my longest standing patients, dating back to 2005.  He had given me his Siemens Centra hearing aid about 5 weeks prior so I could look at it.  He claimed that it was noisy and the output wasn’t clear.  He had lost this hearing aid some time ago and it turned up when he was doing some house cleaning, so I suspect that it had picked up some moisture from somewhere.  While I was a graduate student doing an externship, I had learned about the benefits of the Dry and Store Professional conditioning system.  My supervisor at the time was the owner of a private practice who swore by these machines.  He would get hearing aids from his patients that were weak.  After running them through the Dry and Store box three times, he was able to significantly improve their function.  So, I decided to use the same remedy for my patient’s hearing aid; it was run through the Dry and Store box two separate times.  I returned his Siemens Centra RITE hearing aid to him, and he was satisfied with its performance.  He also agreed to have a video testimonial taken of his positive experience with my practice.  My last patient was Robert.  He came in to pick up supplies for his hearing aids.  He was overdue for a hearing test, so we performed a complete audiological assessment.  I checked on the warranties for his hearing aids and realized that his Loss/Damage warranty expired on 1/2/10.  Since this was a Saturday, I called Oticon and was able to secure a ‘piece of mind’ warranty which entitled him to an additional two years of Loss/Damage and one year repair warranty.  We were both pleased that we could get the extended warranty.