Jan and I both love walking. Point us at a mountain, and we won’t stop until we get to the top. We had to cancel our planned holiday this year at the last minute, so when a member of our walking group offered us the use of her cottage in Devon for a week, it took us half a second, or maybe less, to say ‘Yes, please!’
As a result I finally managed to do something that I have wanted to do for many years, and walk over the open moors in Dartmoor. Navigation across the moors proved to be completely straightforward. But then I did have a map, a compass, a GPS, a guide book, good visibility and a travelling companion with an unerring sense of direction (Jan). Without any one of these it could have been a very different experience.
The holiday was all we hoped for. But whenever we are outdoors, if there is any wind at all, even a slight breeze, the wind noise completely swamps any speech, and I am not able to hear anything. My bone anchored hearing aids (BAHAs) are absolutely wonderful, and I wouldn’t want to part with them for anything! But I really, really wish they could do something about the wind noise. It would make a huge difference to the quality of Jan’s life, and mine, if we could use our BAHAs when the wind is blowing.
Surely the team who invented the BAHA could come up with a solution? It cannot be an insurmountable problem. Couldn’t the microphone cover be redesigned, or the sound processor reprogrammed to reduce the effect of such noise?
Meanwhile, we’ll keep practicing our signing. Gesture and lip-reading were the only options we had. But the countryside was very special, and we could enjoy it together, even when we couldn’t communicate.