How Hearing Aids helped Linda get back her energy to live her life...

How Hearing Aids helped Linda get back her energy to live her life...

  • Oct 05, 2020

“My hearing loss shouldn’t limit my life.”

Linda's Hearing Aids Restored Her Energy to Life!

These are the words of Linda Almqvist, a 41‑year‑old woman who works as a driving instructor at a traffic school in Halmstad, Sweden. Her life took a turn in the right direction when she got access to the right hearing aids.

“There’s a wide range of hearing aids and accessories available today that make everyday life so much easier for people with hearing loss,” she says

 

Linda speaks from experience. She has single-sided hearing loss in her left ear and knows how much energy it takes just to concentrate on what someone is saying.

 

Linda’s hearing loss was discovered when she was six years old. The year was 1983.

 

“I wish the solutions we have today would have been around then, but in 1983 there wasn’t much available,” says Linda. At the time, she met with a deaf and hard of hearing teacher and was offered a little extra assistance in school. She learned to read lips early on and was constantly trying to find a good spot in the classroom where she could hear what the teacher was saying.

“Then I just had to buckle up and try my best,” she says.

 

Finally a solution

Linda started working as a driving instructor in 2009 and quickly realized that her hearing loss was a reoccurring problem during driving lessons. It took so much effort for her to hear the student driver on her left side. This is because the engine noise she would hear in her right ear would drown out other voices.

“I solved the problem by sitting diagonally in the seat turned toward the driver, which soon resulted in neck pain,” says Linda. She found it stressful in some situations when she had to strain to hear what the student driver was saying while at the same time trying to concentrate on the surrounding traffic.

“Working took a lot of my energy, and that was noticed when I came home,” she says. “It wasn’t unusual for me to fall asleep on the couch at eight o’clock at night.”

Then Linda went on parental leave for a few years and the challenges of the job melted into the background. The challenges came into focus again when Linda went back to her job. Soon enough, the neck pain returned. 

The solution came unexpectedly one day during a driving lesson when it turned out that her student driver also had hearing loss. The student told Linda about the hearing aids she used in her job as a teacher. “It was a wake-up call for me,” says Linda. “When she told me how much they helped her have a functioning workday, I thought that there had to be a solution for me, too.”

Linda tried out a number of hearing aids and accessories. This included the Roger Pen and Roger Table Mic, which she was given to try out free of charge for two months.

“I got the time to really test how they worked for me specifically,” she says. “I also got a lot of good advice and suggestions on how these aids could be used in different ways in different environments. Advice that I continue to benefit from.”

Today, Linda uses both the pen and the table microphone. And she is very happy with them.

“In the car I use the Roger Pen, which I attach just over the steering wheel so that I can clearly hear what my students say,” she says. “And in the classroom, I use the Roger Table Mic, which I can combine with the Roger Pen to further amplify the sound if needed.”

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