Newsletter June 2023

A very warm welcome to you all.  The sun is shining on Help in Hearing and our summer newsletter brings lots of news.

Marlow Expansion

We are very excited to announce the expansion of our Marlow practice, with the opening of a second clinic room. Joining Kevin Jeffery is audiologist Vikki Sahdra, who will work together to expand our services in Marlow. We are absolutely delighted to welcome Vikki to our team.

Marlow Garden Party

To give you an opportunity to meet Vikki and celebrate the growth of the practice, we are holding a Garden Party on July 20^th 4.00pm – 6.30pm. Please do join us for bubbles and canapes and the chance to win a super summer raffle for you and your friends.

To find out more about Marlow, Vikki and the Garden Party, please click on the events tab on the left. We also have some exciting special summer promotions including free hearing tests and ear wax removal for over 75’s; a wonderful client testimonial by the DJ and broadcaster Nicky Horne; a feature on our lovely Patient Care Coordinator in Henley, Kinga Silver; and some hints and tips for travelling when you have a hearing loss.

Henley Survey

At Help in Hearing, we are always looking at ways to improve the services we offer to you, our patients. In order to ensure we are offering the best service possible; we would like to invite all patients of our Henley clinic to provide us with your feedback. We would very much appreciate a few minutes of your time if you can complete a short survey by clicking here.

Aston Hearing

Finally, we are delighted to announce the development of a close working regional relationship with Aston Hearing in Thame, Amersham and Princes Risborough. We have known the staff at Aston for many years and believe that by working together we can offer more availability for clinical ear care appointments and hearing aid support.

Our newsletter and news bulletins are a great way of keeping you up to date, and we love hearing back from you. Please keep in touch. We hope to see you at one of our events and thank you for the lovely emails and the feedback that we always get.

Mark your Calendar!

You are invited to a garden party to celebrate our newly expanded clinic…

Join us at Help in Hearing Marlow on the 20th of July at 4pm – 6.30pm as we unveil our newly expanded clinic space, introduce you to our newest audiologist, Vikki Sahdra and reconnect you with our senior audiologist Kevin Jefferies. Kevin and Vikki will be on hand to answer any of your hearing and ear related questions throughout the afternoon.

Don’t forget to participate in our raffle for a chance to win an incredible summer hamper! Plus, if you bring along a friend who isn’t a patient, you’ll receive an extra ticket to increase your chances of winning.

Mark your calendar and be part of an afternoon of bubbles and canapes. We can’t wait to greet you on the 20th of July! Please register for the event here or let Natalya in the office know if you are planning to attend on 0345 2220579.

Thank you for attending

For those of you who dialled into our virtual event last month, thank you for attending; for those who couldn’t join us on the day, you will find a recording of the event below.

As promised, here is a link to the recording of the event. If you would like to use the automatic captioning feature, you can use the ‘cc’ button to turn these on or off. Alternatively, you can find a full transcription of the talk here.

Spotlight on….Kinga Silver, our Patient Care Co-ordinator in Henley 

Kinga Silver, the Patient Care Coordinator at Help in Hearing Henley absolutely loves her job! Her own personal journey led her to working in the hearing industry and she thrives on looking after our clients, completely understanding what it is like to have hearing loss. Although it is very painful for her to reflect on what happened, Kinga decided to share her story with our Practice Manager Gilly, in the hope that it will help some of our clients.

From a young age, Kinga has had a moderate to severe loss in her right ear. The hearing in her left ear was so “good” it was able to compensate for the loss in her right ear.  When she was around 35, a friend noticed that Kinga was missing out on some conversation.  Indeed, a subsequent test revealed that the hearing in her “good” left ear had dropped a little, so she tried an NHS hearing aid for a while, but she says she found it uncomfortable and difficult to get used to.

Sudden hearing loss

In December 2014 while she was watching TV, Kinga became aware of an invasive buzzing noise in her left ear. She thought she was tired and struggling with the start of a cold, so she went to bed. Alarmingly when she woke up the next morning, she had zero hearing in her left ear. She was understandably very scared. Her GP said it was just catarrh and possibly an infection, so she was given antibiotics and he suggested it would settle down in a couple of days.

However, after 48 hours, the tinnitus was so loud that she begged her husband to call the GP again, as she couldn’t hear to speak to him.

Kinga was referred to ENT eleven days after the onset of her sudden sensorineural hearing loss (SSHL). The protocol today for SSHL is immediate referral to A&E who then refer the patient as an emergency to ENT. We have helped several clients with this process, as you may be aware from previous articles, and Wendy Davies, our senior audiologist in Farnham Common, had personal experience of how well the emergency system works. Wendy was prescribed with steroids immediately and her hearing was restored. However, because of the delay in treatments this was not the case for Kinga.  Her consultant declared that her hearing was lost and that she would need bilateral hearing aids.

Impossible to Work

For Kinga and her family, that Christmas was a write off. She explains:

“I couldn’t understand why it had happened to me; I was only 41. Trying to get my head round my loss was just awful. Nobody understood. I could not get over the fact that my hearing was not coming back. I felt so isolated and didn’t want to join in the festivities.  I was angry and wanted to blame someone”.

She added: “The NHS aids were big and ugly, and the sound offered very poor speech clarity.”   She worked in financial services and although her employers were very supportive, they didn’t have the telephony technology to help her communicate, which really knocked her confidence further. She says: “I found it exhausting and stressful. All I wanted to do was withdraw and hide away. I wanted to completely shut myself off, even from my husband and my two girls.  The tinnitus was unbearable, and I felt like I was going crazy.”

For many people, losing your hearing is an emotional journey of acceptance and can be compared to a bereavement. At this point, Kinga was referred to a counsellor and she slowly began to find herself again. Bravely she decided to get on with her life. She worked at a pre-school for a couple of hours a week and although she found it hard when the children mumbled and then shouted at her, this helped her to see life differently. She wanted to become the woman she used to be, someone who was previously confident and outgoing. “I was thrown a curve ball in life and in the end, I knew I had to pick myself up and carry on!”

Patients can relate to me

In April 2016 she booked to see a private audiologist who gave her the time she needed to discuss her hearing journey and what would work for her. When she realised that help was out there, she was inspired to support others. She comments:

“I am really driven at work to help people. I have been through it, so our patients can relate to me. They are surprised when they realise I am deaf, so I am a good example of how well aids can work and that you don’t need to miss out on life!”

She continues: “I am also very interested in the technology as it works so well for me. I like to know about new aids being introduced and what they might mean for me and for our clients. Having been so low, I now feel lucky – eventually I was looked after, so I want to give something back”.

She has been working for Help in Hearing Henley (previously known at The Hearing Clinic Henley) for five years as their Patient Care Coordinator.  Her hearing aids are not only comfortable and discreet, but they also offer sophisticated sound and speech discrimination. She takes all phone calls at the practice via a phone clip so she can answer the phone confidently.

She explains: “I love talking and listening to clients. It is so rewarding to be part of a team like this that makes a difference.”

We are delighted that Kinga is part of our team as she is like a breath of fresh air. Recently nominated for a “go the extra mile” award, she is bubbly, confident, kind and empathetic – exactly what our clients need at “front of house”. We are so glad she decided to turn the experience on its head and “give back” to help others.

If you or your family and friends ever experience sudden hearing loss as Kinga did, please remember to call us immediately for advice. We will offer you an emergency appointment to assess what the problem is and then refer you on if necessary. Our audiologists are highly trained and experienced, so who better to see for a professional opinion on your hearing requirements? Call 01494 57755 to speak to Kinga in Henley or 0345 2220579 to speak to Natalya in Farnham Common & Marlow.

As a valued Help in Hearing Henley patient, we would like to ask you for your opinion on our Henley clinic and how we can improve it.

At Help in Hearing Henley, we are always looking at ways to improve the service we offer to our patients. In order to make sure we are offering our patients the best service possible, we would like to invite you to give your feedback on our Henley clinic. We would very much appreciate a few minutes of your time if you can complete a short survey by clicking here.

Have you been thinking about leaving us a Google review?

We think that is a fanatastic idea, when you leave us a review on Facebook and Google we will make a donation to Alzheimer’s Dementia Support, The National Deaf Children’s Society and Hearing Dogs for Deaf People!

Radio legend thanks Help in Hearing for changing his life