Bob Martin

by Bob Martin, AuD   When we help people hear well, they radiate joy. My patient Kim is a perfect example. She is a young mother of three who came to me recently in tears. Her husband had lost his job and they were about to lose their house. “I know how to make money,” she told me. “I am

Part 2 in a series Technology impacts everyday life. Last year while driving home after skiing at Mammoth we got caught in a blinding snowstorm. It was night. Visibility was zero. I could not see the road. I had no way of knowing when to turn to get back to our lodge. Fortunately, we had a new GPS unit that

What a world! The nightly news programs hammer us with an endless stream of ugliness. But, for all the bad news that is reported, I believe there is an equal amount of good news, even if not all of it gets into the media. The good news often tells the stories of medical miracles: People without legs get new ones.

Sometimes patients come into our office unable to hear or to communicate effectively. What’s more, they are scared. As their hearing has deteriorated over the years, they and their loved ones fear that they are going completely deaf. These patients and family members come to us hoping and praying that we can help them. Working with such patients puts our

A hearing aid is unlike any other medical device, and the highly complex process involved in learning to use it is also unique. The uniqueness of the fitting process makes it difficult to explain to new patients. There is no “average” or “typical” fitting that you can point to as an example. Hard-of-hearing people come to see us because they

We are witnessing huge advances in the world of science and technology. Progress has been especially dramatic in the areas of electronics and applied genetics. For example, the latest iPhone, which fits easily into your shirt pocket, has a capacity far beyond what was available in a desktop computer when this century began. Meanwhile, scientists have unraveled the genetic code

Genève returned to our office the other day with a hearing aid that was dead for the fourth time this year. The instrument, a high-tech receiver-in-the canal (RIC) model, had a little wax on the dome, but the dome was not plugged. I then checked the internal filter on the receiver. It was completely plugged with wax. I looked in

  I have headlamps, fiber-optic otoscopes, and light bars in all my treatment rooms. You would think that would be enough light–but it’s not. There are times, say, when I’m at the front desk changing an internal filter on a RIC or doing some other task that requires extra-high visibility. That means I need more light. Sometimes I need a

This week, in our continuing series of posts about creating and using listening programs, I would like to talk about helping hearing aid wearers hear better in “fun” places, such as bowling alleys. Many years ago, when remote controls first came onto the market, I had a patient who wanted to hear when she went bowling. “I love going to

There are many different ways a hard-of-hearing person can use a telephone with their hearing aids. The three most common are: (1) Holding the telephone near the microphone on the hearing aid. (2) Using a telecoil (T-coil), holding the hearing aid against the phone, and (3) Connecting the hearing aid to the telephone by means of Blue Tooth technology (usually