Chad,
I'm coming back to this thread a little late in the discussion. I guess not everyone will feel that BAHA alters your life. Like Jan, I found being SSD very difficult. BAHA has changed my life and made it better. I think the thing is, you have to keep your expectations realistic. I was afraid my expectations were too high, but after reading about BAHA both here and on other sites, I think I had very realistic expectations. In fact, BAHA has exceeded my initial expectations. That's not to say that it doesn't have its limitations.
I was recently on vacation in Florida and visited a couple of the Disney parks. I found my BAHA to really be only minimally helpful at the parks (it was just too crowded and noisy and BAHA doesn't work well in noisy environments) but completely secure as far as how well it was attached to my abutment. I wore the safety line for just in case purposes but found that that did detach from my clothing. Luckily I had a safety pin with me and attached it to the safety line and pinned it to my blouse and that did the trick, even though it turned out to be unnecessary. The device itself stayed firmly planted on my abutment throughout the day on all the rides, although I was careful not to let my head hit anything. I also checked fairly often to make sure it was still there. BAHA, like any other assisstive device, has its limitatiions. In my humble opinion, although I love my BAHA, and recommend it very highly in every other way, the amount of concern I had about it falling off outweighed any benefit and I wouldn't wear it to an amusement park again. As for the tinniness that Tammy mentioned, I find that if I hear sound directly through the processor (i.e. using the phone on my deaf side) the sound does have a tinny quality. However, in normal conversation the sound is pretty close to normal. Also, I have also been able to localize sound that is coming from behind me -- a big plus in my opinion. I haven't been able to localize sound coming from any other direction though. Since I am SSD on my right, all sound comes to my left ear and sounds like it's coming from my left. I hope that, someday, I'll have better luck with that. I know some people have to varying degrees.
Wendy
