“You’re coming through my hearing aids!” laughs Lynne Kingston as she enthuses on the phone about the little devices that have changed her life.
The 57-year-old from Kent had been aware of her deteriorating hearing for at least 15 years, from as young as her early forties. She constantly asked people to repeat themselves. Noisy restaurants, parties, and the telephone were a nightmare for Kingston, who runs a student accommodation rental business. “I do most of my work on the phone,” she says. “I had to put it on speakerphone, which meant everyone else could hear.”
About ten years ago she consulted a hearing specialist and tried basic hearing aids, but soon gave up. While they amplified all the sounds around her, she still couldn’t make out the ones she needed to hear. “I was in denial,” she says. “I thought, I’m not that deaf.”
But she was. Eventually, pressure from her children and a friend who wore hearing aids made her think again, as did buying her son and daughter trendy wireless Bluetooth earbuds for Christmas. “If people can have these white things sticking out of their ears, why would I be bothered about wearing a hearing aid?”
So in the summer of 2020, Kingston did some research and was
