No doubt if my frequency range was intact I could understand speech better and I agree that an aid would help. If I made my living listening to people I would definitely get one now. I drive a truck. When I talk on the phone with my bluetooth, I can heat fine even when the ear piece is in my bad ear. I have maybe 5 minutes worth of face to face conversation a day outside of my family and I can manage things at this point.
As for family, they can speak up or be ignored. I understand plenty of people just fine. My kids need to learn to speak clearly as it is a life skill they will need when older and if my wife doesn't want to bother, then I am not going to miss whatever she is mumbling about. I understand my mother in law with her thick accent and soft voice because she speaks clearly. In a world where I have to pass up all of the good parking spaces (handicapped), endure endless appeals for my money to "find a cure" for everyone elses' affliction, where I have to be the only one in the world to refuse to wear pink for breast cancer since NOBODY gives a tinker's darn about prostate cancer, I figure all I am asking is that people move their lips and aim their pie whole in my direction IF they want me to listen to them.
I know too many people who have spent a fortune on hearing aids and stopped wearing them that with my minimal loss (at this point), I am not going to get them. It's not vanity, it's not the cost, it's the maintenance and the apparent annoying way they transmit the frequencies that you can hear fine already. They are like contact lenses. For people with thick lenses, they are a huge improvement. For me, with my 20-40 vision, they were more trouble than they were worth.
