It’s looking like face masks are here to stay and they sure have caused difficulty for some of our patients.
Masks & BTE Hearing Aids
If you wear behind-the-ear (BTE) style hearing aids, you may have difficulty wearing a protective mask around your ears. Here are some simple solutions to keep the elastic band from your mask off your ears.
If you have a mask that goes around the head instead of over the ears, this is the simplest solution.
If your hair can be put in a bun, wrap the mask’s elastic around the bun.
Sew two buttons onto a piece of ribbon to wear on the back of your head. Attach the mask’s elastic to the buttons.
Sew two buttons onto a fabric headband above your ears and hook the mask’s elastic onto the buttons.
Mask Tips
Here are tips for mask success we’ve gathered so far.
- Masks with straps that go around each ear often catch on over-the-ear hearing aids, knocking them onto the floor. To avoid this, use a mask that has an elastic band or tie that wraps all the way around the head. If your mask straps do go around each ear, carefully remove your mask from one ear at a time, taking care to keep one hand on your hearing aid while removing the ear loop with your other hand.
- Always double-check that both hearing aids are still in place after you put on or remove your mask.
- For those of you who need to lip read, try to order masks with clear fronts. While you probably won’t ask strangers to wear these masks, at least your family can wear them outside of the house, making communication easier for both of you.
- For those who have hearing aids paired to their smartphones, you can consider changing the location services for the hearing aid app to “always,” so it will always track your location whether or not you are using the app (as long as you feel comfortable with those privacy settings). If you lose a hearing aid it will be easier to track it with this setting. If you need our help with this, please let us know!
- Some newer technology hearing aids have phone apps that allow you to create new programs, such as a “mask” program, by turning up the high pitches as far as you can tolerate and increasing the overall gain by a few clicks.
Please share these tips with your friends and family members. If you have other tips, please reply to this email with them and we can crowdsource more solutions.