50 Years in Noisy Environments Leads to Hearing Aids feat. David Coppee | First Time Hearing Aid User

About The Hearing Matters Podcast

The Hearing Matters Podcast discusses hearing technology (more commonly known as hearing aids), best practices, and a growing epidemic: Hearing Loss. The show is hosted by father and son - Blaise Delfino, M.S. - HIS and Dr. Gregory Delfino, CCC-A. Blaise Delfino and Dr. Gregory Delfino treat patients with hearing loss, tinnitus, and Central Auditory Processing Disorder at Audiology Services, located in Bethlehem, Nazareth, and East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. 

On this episode, we interview one of our very own patients, Mr. Coppee.  Mr. Coppee came into the office about a year ago, struggling with hearing loss where we fit him with Oticon Opn hearing aids. Mr. Coppee worked in the HVAC field, often finding himself in loud and noisy environments for nearly 50 years, being one of the main reasons for his hearing loss. With his hearing technology, Mr. Coppee loves to hear life’s story, spending more time with his many grandchildren and loving wife.

On this episode we discuss:

·         The impact of hearing technology

·         The benefits of being a family-owned practice

·         The lack of hearing protection prevalent in loud working environments

·         Hearing loss linked to loud working environments

·         Conducting Speech in Noise (SPIN) testing

·         Spreading hearing healthcare awareness

·         Hearing Loss linked to Diabetes

·         Advice for those who may be hesitant to get their hearing checked

How Do Loud Environments Affect Your Hearing?

A one-time exposure to extreme loud sound or listening to loud sounds for a long time can cause hearing loss. Loud noise can damage cells and membranes in the cochlea. Listening to loud noise for an extended amount of time can overwork the hair cells in the ear, which cause these cells to die.

If you or a loved one is experiencing hearing loss, make an appointment with an audiologist or hearing healthcare provider. It is essential to visit a professional. At Audiology Services, we believe that hearing technology should be fit by a licensed professional.

Questions? We encourage our listeners to forward any questions or comments to the following email address: Blaise@audiologyservicesllcpa.com

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https://audiologyservicespa.com

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Transcript

Blaise Delfino: 0:06

You're tuned into the Hearing Matters Podcast with Dr. Gregory Delfino, and Blaise Delfino of Audiology services and Fader Plugs, the show that discusses hearing technology, best practices, and a growing national epidemic hearing loss. On today's show, we have a very special guest. His name is Mr. David Coppee. And he is a current hearing aid user, Mr. Coppee, welcome to the show. How are you?

David Coppee: 0:35

Good morning. Good morning. Pleasure to be here. Pleasure to be able to give some of the background and why I decided to why I needed to go to wearing hearing aids.

Blaise Delfino: 0:47

Absolutely. And before we dive in Mr. Coppee. Can you please bring us through your history with regard to the profession with which you were in because prior to the show, we were discussing, you were you were in HVAC for over 50 years, you were around a lot of heavy equipment, loud equipment. So bring us through your background, because our listeners really want to learn about that. So bring us through your background.

David Coppee: 1:17

Sure. I'm 67 years old and I was in the HVAC industry for over 50 years. Everything from residential systems to large commercial systems. So there was always a tremendous amount of ambient noise in the business I was in, depending on where how and why there was a amount of mechanical

work that had to be done: 1:43

cranes, setting of equipment, working on equipment tearing stuff down. Always in a loud environment, we would try to wear hearing aids, excuse me hearing plugs, or earphones that would deaden the sound, but that wasn't always an option.

Blaise Delfino: 2:02

Sure. I'm sorry for interrupting. Was there a when we talk about wearing hearing protection on the job. Was it mandatory when you first started in the industry?

David Coppee: 2:13

No, it never was there was only certain areas that it was mandatory, and none of which I was involved with being with a utility. When jackhammers were being used in industry, there was a tremendous amount of loud high decibel noise that was required when we were in those situations, but never on the day to day basis for the work I was doing.

Blaise Delfino: 2:37

So essentially, we're talking about 50 years of being exposed to loud noise, maybe on a daily basis.

David Coppee: 2:46

Depending on the jobsite, yes.

Blaise Delfino: 2:48

Mr. Coppee, was there a specific incident that prompted you to pursue hearing technology because again, bringing us through your background being exposed to these loud noises on a daily basis, what was that specific moment you said to yourself, I need to do something about my hearing sensitivity.

David Coppee: 3:12

About five years ago, physically, I had to change my position within the company. I had to go from a service tech being on the road constantly to getting a desk job where I was a dispatcher. Now a dispatching for the company I was with our office covered the whole central swath of New Jersey. We had 12 people working in the office between the hours of seven to three, the job is a 24/7, 365 shifts were seven to three, three to 11 and 11pm to 7am people in the office at that early shift, we could have 12 people in there all talking at the same time, dispatching for different areas of the state. From three to 11 we would drop down to maybe five to seven people from 11pm to 7am. We had one person during the middle of the day was always the most hectic,

Blaise Delfino: 4:10

The busiest right?

David Coppee: 4:11

Oh unbelievable

Blaise Delfino: 4:12

Understatement

David Coppee: 4:13

You so you would literally have 12 conversations going on in that room at one time. You're looking at four computer screens, you're looking at emergency screens, you're listening to radio transmissions, you're listening to phone calls, and everybody has their own set of tasks that they're doing, and they all overlap. So you sit there and listen to what's going on around you besides doing your job. Primary was a gas emergency, somebody calls in they smell gas that takes priority over everything has a certain set of procedures that must be followed to the tee and there is no error. You know you don't get a do over because people's lives are at stake. Specific incident that happened was, there was a lot of things going on. And I missed an address. Fortunately, as we all listen to each other, we're always covering each other. I was corrected, and we got it back on track. Now from the time a emergency comes in, there are 60 minutes that a tech has to arrive on that scene. And some of the areas that we cover, it could be 45-50 minutes between where a person is going to where he has to go to.

Blaise Delfino: 5:31

Sure.

David Coppee: 5:32

So everything has to be very accurate, very precise. And that's why we always covered each other

Blaise Delfino: 5:40

very little margin for error.

David Coppee: 5:42

Zero margin

Blaise Delfino: 5:44

Literally zero margin

David Coppee: 5:45

You know, because you don't want to be the person that says, well, I didn't get somebody there and there was a fatality, or there was a structure that, you know, was destroyed or something like that. So it's all taken extremely

Blaise Delfino: 5:58

You take extreme cautious measurements.

David Coppee: 6:00

Oh, absolutely. And again, after that one time, I just made it a point that I had to get something taken care of, it just was a matter of my job and people safety.

Blaise Delfino: 6:10

So essentially Mr. Coppee, your tipping point was I am working in a complex listening environment number one, which I have difficulty understanding in noisy situations, but also the fact that you are in a profession, and your position was that of people's lives are on the line. And if I miss communicate, and if I miss understand something, there could be a fatality.

David Coppee: 6:38

100%

Blaise Delfino: 6:39

Let's lead into your type and degree of hearing sensitivity. So your tipping point was I need to ensure that I am doing my job correctly and to the best of my ability. So what was the next step that you took following the understanding that you know, I'm really struggling to understand I need to do something about this, I need to get my hearing tested. What did that process look like?

David Coppee: 7:05

I began a process of investigating different hearing aids different, I don't want to say companies, but professions like yours, where you do, that's what you do. You know, just like I know, heating and air conditioning. I my hearing was not getting any better. He was getting worse. So I needed to find somebody that was going to be able to help me with advancing my me to better hearing.

Blaise Delfino: 7:31

Absolutely

David Coppee: 7:32

I needed somebody that was going to be able to put me in the right direction Give me the right equipment, I needed to do my job. Whether it was strictly for close range for in the office, whether it was just to be on the phone, but I needed something that was going to have me accomplish my job to the best of my ability.

Blaise Delfino: 7:49

Dr. Delfino can you share with us Mr. Coppee's, type and degree of hearing sensitivity and how he performs in noisy situations, because Mr. Coppee, you've been a patient of ours for for quite some time now. And you've been part of our hearing family. And I think it's essential that our listeners understand your type and degree of hearing sensitivity, but also how you perform in a noisy situation.

Dr. Gregory Delfino: 8:14

Mr. Coppee's hearing was what I would have expected from someone in his age group. It was not a significantly impaired auditory mechanism. And had he gone to a more conventional type of facility where they were just doing Hearing and Speech discrimination ability, the ability to hear and understand speech at a comfortable listening level. Mr. Coppee may have been told hearings fine, move on. But at Audiology Services we always do as part of best practices, speech in noise testing. And it was during that time when we had done speech in noise testing that we were able to illuminate the degree of difficulty Mr. Coppee had in speech in noise. This was in fact the reason why he had come, we were able to quantify it. And as we move forward, that was the criteria by which we fit him with the appropriate type of amplification.

Blaise Delfino: 9:02

Mr. Coppee presents with what we would consider moderate to severe speech noise scores. Is that correct, Dr. Delfino?

Dr. Gregory Delfino: 9:09

Yes.

Blaise Delfino: 9:09

So understanding speech in those noisy situations, like in the dispatcher office, when there's a lot of conversations going on, that's a complex listening situation and you're trying to focus on one conversation, that's going to be difficult. Mr. Coppee, what environments did you have the most difficult time in prior to wearing hearing aids?

David Coppee: 9:32

The primary one as we had talked about, was my work environment, having to be able to distinguish conversations, you have people with all sorts of accents, dialects, you need to be able to understand clearly what is being said. Not going to the constant. "Could you repeat that?" Or the infamous, "huh?" or "what" You know you need to get around that. Other than In my work environment, mainly when large groups, medium sized groups were present, as you might do a presentation to a group, I did a lot of training for the apprentices, small groups, not too bad. But then when they start talking between each other, you start having trouble distinguishing who's saying what and where, you know, equipment talked about earlier, some of its very high pitched, some of its low pitched, depending on the room, it's in the type of job that we're in commercial building, hospital, office building, they're all going to have different levels of air movement, and air noise, which is sometimes extreme, you know, you get your head and inside an area where the constant air movement is, is almost deafening.

Blaise Delfino: 10:50

Absolutely. Can you tell us about your experience? in those noisy situations, complex listening situations with multiple speakers. Did you often find yourself possibly socially withdrawing? Or would you at times have the other individual you're speaking to your communication partner? Pretty much dominate the conversation?

David Coppee: 11:14

I would try to, I wouldn't say isolate, I tried to single out. So I would be talking make sure I was talking to one particular person. Now, in my case, prior to the hearing aids, my left ear was better than my right.

Blaise Delfino: 11:31

Sure.

David Coppee: 11:31

So I would find myself angling my body more to my left side in close to that person or how's their speaking, and then be compounded by somebody on my right side starting to talk and hearing noise rather than conversation?

Blaise Delfino: 11:48

Absolutely. Did you ever find this to be fatiguing?

David Coppee: 11:52

I never realized it actually, until we had gone through our hearing test here. And it was explained that trying to hear and the exercise involved in getting yourself to listen harder, was extremely fatiguing. I and I never added the items together. And after I was explained that by Dr. Delfino when he gave me my hearing test, it was like, of course, you know, that's, you know why I would come home from a training session or a session where I have been talking in front of a group of people, why I would be rather tired.

Blaise Delfino: 12:29

Exhausted, fatigued, right?

David Coppee: 12:31

Yeah and my wife would notice that and I could not I just never added it up and I just said, Well, it was a long day.

Blaise Delfino: 12:38

Busy day. Dr. Delfino can you bring us through the concept of effortful listening because you and I just presented this past week about effortful listening, decreasing listening effort.

Dr. Gregory Delfino: 13:38

When we're listening while we were listening and being very cognitive, we're using our brain to hear and understand all thats being said, our ears are really just a conduit to which we were able to receive that information. And our auditory cortex allows us to divide, subdivide sounds related to being important and non important. You know, the auditory mechanism is really set up as a very primitive protective device where our hearing enabled us to alert us to predators to emergencies. So it is always in the on position, we are always receiving sounds. What happens is when we lose the ability to recognize where the sound is coming from, we then struggle with understanding what's being said, you know, when I on Saturday morning, if I'm sitting down, I'm reading for a while I was listening to the sound a little beeping tone, I just couldn't understand where it was coming from. And I was looking around, it was distracting, I couldn't focus on what I was what I was reading, and what I had found out that it was the actual the timer on the stove. Once I had recognized what it was it enabled me to then say, Okay, this is what that sound is and now I can better focus and understand what's being said. So having unique, almost oddball sounds in our environment like speech and we're when we're struggling, we're struggling with trying to understand what's being said. That's where the effort comes into play. It's no longer just hearing if we need to struggle to understand all of what's being said and trying to put it together. And situations such as yours, Mr. Coppee, when you're when you're trying to teach where words have meaning and consequences, you struggle, it's important for you to hear and understand. So the effort is extreme in your in your case.

Blaise Delfino: 15:15

Of course, the concept behind wearing hearing technology is to decrease listening effort, and increase speech understanding. The concept of wearing hearing aids, as you know, is not to make everything louder. If you make everything louder, that's not going to be a comfortable listening environment. You wear Oticon Opn 1s, which the instruments are able to separate and discern and understand the difference between speech and non speech sounds. Before we get into your journey, with the hearing aids, how did your hearing loss affect inter personal relationships? I know you are quite the family man, tell me a little bit about this, there has to be some some interesting stories, because I know we were talking about a few of them prior to, to this episode.

David Coppee: 16:03

The effect was within family gatherings, where, you know, you'd have to try to single out a single conversation, when the family gets together, we have a lot of cousins, uncles, aunts. Now, at least on my side, we have, you know, four grandkids. So we are sitting there, and with the different range of where my hearing is, you know, you have everything from half a dozen men talking to the wives and the kids and the nieces and nephews. So your range that you're listening to is everything from a low range, you know, up to hearing the, you know, the grandkids, you know, running around screaming and yelling and hollering and just, you know, having a grand old time. So you don't want to miss anything.

Blaise Delfino: 16:53

Especially family and grandchildren

David Coppee: 16:55

Especially the grandchildren. You know, the giggling our grandchildren, we have two boys, nine and seven and two girls, three years and eight months. And they all have their own little nuances of how they communicate how they look at you how they run around, you know, when they want you. I'm papa, so I get to key in on that. And unfortunately, the kids have grandkids, their great grandfather was known as papa. So now you got to have us answering the, you know, to the call. And the boys are typical boys and they are into mischief and into whatever boys get into. And I love it with all my heart. And our youngest, our next youngest granddaughter, you know, is dragging me by my hand out to the swings out in the backyard and you know Papa push me higher, higher, higher, and the games you can play with them and when I was pushing her, her feet would come up and they hit me in the stomach and she was going on that she's leaving footprints on Papa's belly. And we're just having one great time after another and just realizing how much was being lost to not hearing what was going on. I was involved with safety at my work and being able to hear what's going on in any situation is key. Like you were saying, Dr. Delfino in a emergency situation, you need to be able to hear, you know, you're riding in your car with the windows up and radio on. How well do you hear that siren that's coming up behind you?

Blaise Delfino: 18:46

That's a very good point. Thank you for bringing that up.

David Coppee: 18:48

I always ride with my window partly open because I worked in a city environment and you needed to be able to your fire trucks, police, ambulances, but more than not screeching tires. If somebody's traveling at a high rate, you need to be more aware of what your surrounding is.

Blaise Delfino: 19:09

Absolutely.

David Coppee: 19:10

So that was a you know, the giggles and that was primary just to be able to share that more with you know, the kids.

Blaise Delfino: 19:17

And that's what that's what life's about. I mean, Dr. Delfino we always talk about and our trademark is hear life's story. You want to hear life's story, you want to be with your family and your friends and experience life in and of itself, because untreated hearing loss is linked to social isolation, depression, diabetes, there's all these comorbidities linked to to hearing loss in and of itself and unfortunately Mr. Coppee too many individuals, they may not take that leap right away. Because there's, there's a lot of grief related to hearing loss in and of itself. But I'm so happy to hear and we're so happy to hear that no pun intended, that you took that important first step and it's been such an honor to work with you and to hear your story and all of our patients, I consider us extremely blessed here at Audiology Services to be able to connect to all of our patients and with all of our patients, to introduce you to this new hearing world to enjoy your grandchildren, enjoy your family, enjoy your your family gatherings, things of that nature. So when you started to notice that you presented with hearing loss, and you you took that important step of visiting an audiologist and getting fit properly with hearing aids, what has your experience been like with the hearing aids in and of themselves? What does that experience been like the past couple of years for you?

David Coppee: 20:45

Well, I think even Prior to that, there was an education that went into it before I could even enjoy the hearing aids. I've been a diabetic since since 2007. I did not or was never told that the effect diabetes could have on your hearing.

Blaise Delfino: 21:02

Wow. Okay.

David Coppee: 21:03

So a lot of it I attuned to just work environment and listening to music too loud, not realizing that the process or the diabetes could contribute, and more than likely did contribute to hearing loss. So by taking that into consideration, it was like, wow, okay, something else. I mean, I know it affects so many other parts of your body, the diabetes is more devastating than a lot of people realize, finding that out. And unfortunately, it's something that happened, I was probably the biggest cause of it, because I wasn't watching what I was doing. I probably was type two diabetes. And I was probably more involved in my own demise in that case than I should have been.

Blaise Delfino: 21:53

It's interesting, because you say you weren't educated on the fact that there is a link between diabetes and hearing loss, Dr. Delfino, what can be done to raise awareness of these comorbidities linked to untreated hearing loss? Of course, with the Hearing Matters Podcast and at Audiology Services, we're on a mission to raise awareness, but is this a conversation we need to continue to have with the primary care physicians and physicians in general?

Dr. Gregory Delfino: 22:22

We certainly need to reinforce it. I think oftentimes, it's overlooked, because there are so many other issues that are involved. And I think what's important to the patient, and the patient for the primary care physician is to let them know if they're if they don't have the time to certainly give them the resources to discover to find out what are some of the other comorbidities of the disease process that they have, you know at Audiology Services when we talk about hearing loss, we talk about all those comorbidities and we're certainly willing to be a resource to provide our patients with any other additional information that they need to explore that this matter further.

Blaise Delfino: 22:55

And, of course, as a team, because we take the team approach, not only with our personal team members here, but also with our patients, together, we can raise awareness of overall hearing healthcare. Tell us how the hearing aids Mr. Coppee has increased your speech understanding in those complex listening environments?

David Coppee: 23:15

Well, I think it really has to be prefaced by saying making the choice of where I was going to go for my, the hearing process, I think was huge.

Blaise Delfino: 23:28

Tell us more about that.

David Coppee: 23:29

You know, it was like, I don't want to say it was like, putting a phone book, if anybody remembers what a phone book is, you know, up on the wall and throwing a dart at it. I just saw this was a family business and that is an important thing to me. Most family business, I know, have a great rapport, so I, that was one of the main things I did. And coming in everything from the registration to finding out who is going to be taking care of me, I was treated like I was your only customer. And I don't wanna say customer. And I will say patient,

Blaise Delfino: 24:06

You were treated like a family member.

David Coppee: 24:08

That's exactly what I'm trying to say. Yeah, it was you were you talk to me on a level not down to me. You talked with me, you you asked the questions that I was going to more than likely ask anyway. And even when I came up with questions that were not the standard, you were more than able to just clarify what I was thinking made a tremendous difference in how I accepted the treatment, you gave me options that were I'd never considered before. And it made it a lot easier to go through the process. I was completely at ease. I had no problem calling. You know, I got a question about this. You know, you were busy with a patient, I'd get a call back almost immediately which was so nice, I mean,

Blaise Delfino: 24:58

Well, thank you, thank you.

David Coppee: 24:59

You know, it made it really nice and it just was even the people that greet you at the front desk, are just wonderful. I mean, they make you feel at home, comfortable. And that makes the process easier.

Blaise Delfino: 25:13

Sure, thank you so much for those kind words, truly. And that's very important because moving forward with hearing technology can be scary because you're inundated with if I google hearing aids near me or audiologist near me, you might get a plethora, or a huge list of who do I go to. It's important to team up with a practice that believes in what you believes in and is going to walk with you throughout the process. Not just say, here's your hearing instruments and you're on your merry way good luck, but we appreciate your kind words to us, because it's our goal that we do treat every single one of our patients like they are part of our hearing family and we make that a conscious effort.

David Coppee: 25:57

That has made such a difference because when you mentioned to anybody that you're going to be getting hearing aids. Well, it goes down to well, you know, there's a special over at BJ's on hearing devices and they're a lot cheaper and I said, yeah, well, I mean, you can see advertise the miracle ear, you know, you, you know, throw it in your ear turn up the volume. And like you said, that's a volume increase does not do anything to clarify the speech range, noise range, and whatever. So to use it to actually communicate with other people in the office, I worked at numerous a number of people that are, you know, because of the noise environment we've worked in, have had similar problems. And one guy goes, Oh, well, you know, I got mine over here. And you know, I can, you know, get on my phone, and I can adjust it. And I said, Yeah, but have you had anybody really go over the whole process?

Blaise Delfino: 26:57

Absolutely.

David Coppee: 26:57

And which your education to me helped me give education to others, because it's more than just increasing the volume. And we joke with my wife, because we do a lot of communicating, it's flat out, we enjoy talking to each other.

Blaise Delfino: 27:12

That's important.

David Coppee: 27:13

Yeah. And I guess I am strange. I am not the normal. And I'm one of the people that really enjoys talking with his wife. She paid me to say that I, we enjoy communicating. So being able to listen to her conversation, or talking to me, and being able to respond instead of "what, could you repeat that" or just flat out like ignoring her. It's so much better, to be able to have that communication to be able to speak and answer the question correctly, not just well, let's see did she asked me this that? Yes, dear. Yes. Yeah. And I tried to brush over it. That's where I find a huge improvement. In In fact, she can tell when I don't have them in, if I get up in the morning. And you know, I'm just too lazy to put them in right away. And she goes, you don't have your hearing agent. Do you've been ignoring me? Like, I'll be right back.

Blaise Delfino: 28:10

I'll be right back.

David Coppee: 28:11

Be right back and I go get the hearing aids. So its really a godsend as far as being able to communicate with people and hear conversation.

Blaise Delfino: 28:22

That is that is so so nice to hear Mr. Coppee and what would you tell our listeners right now who are experiencing signs and symptoms of hearing loss, but are hesitant to take those next steps?

David Coppee: 28:36

Well, I think the biggest thing that I found was that it's not going to get better. Unfortunately, hearing loss is a in I'd say, also many cases, not reversible, it's not going to get any better, it's only going to get worse. And the more you ignore it, the worse it's going to be. And then your perception of how bad it's going to be is going to be exponential, my hearing might get worse. But with the hearing aids, it's able to be adjusted to the level I need it to be at. I have found that I will be in certain situations and I literally have to turn the volume down. Which is nice, because now everything is not just loud, but it's clearer. Blaise, you and I were talking the last time I was in about a possible thing that would be a clip onto the shirt or

Blaise Delfino: 29:31

Remote microphone for your life. Absolutely.

David Coppee: 29:34

For the TV. I mean, that was the biggest one of the biggest things that our house is, I don't have to have the volume of the TV up to 20. So I can hear what's going on. In the meantime, it's too loud for her. So now we're at a comfortable medium, and it makes things a lot more comfortable,

Blaise Delfino: 29:52

Big difference.

David Coppee: 29:53

And everybody's gonna like anything else. Nowadays, the cost, the cost, the cost, the cost, you know, to be able to hear clearly, to be able to understand what is being said, to be able to just communicate on a normal level. I mean, I know people with large families, I mean, we've got, you know, four kids, four grandkids, you want to be able to have communication. Now my youngest daughter talks softly so I turn up the volume and my hearing aid so I can hear her better.

Blaise Delfino: 30:29

And it's nice to have that feature and it's important to note that the cost of untreated hearing loss is greater than the price of the technology and I want to repeat that the cost of untreated hearing loss is greater than the price of hearing technology. When we say cost with untreated hearing loss all of the comorbidities we discussed: cardiovascular disease, increased risk of fall increased risk of cognitive decline or dementia of the Alzheimer's type. So thank you so much for bringing that up Mr. Coppee, and it's such an honor to have you on the hearing matters podcast and to be working with you throughout your new hearing world and Dr. Delfino. I know you have some final remarks. I would love to get your input with regard to everything that Mr. Coppee just said.

Dr. Gregory Delfino: 31:17

All the ancillary issues with regard to his hearing all of that are reasons or motivations for following through on any suspicions that you've got with regard to hearing loss, and Mr. And Mr. Coppee's case, I mean, he is one of our, he's part of our family and so what's nice is that, well, you know, he's got some diabetes, he's got some hearing loss. Every year we bring him in, we do a hearing test, we adjust and change and upgrade. This is not a once and done, he is part of our family. And we see him and take care of him on an annual basis and any other time that he needs us.

Blaise Delfino: 31:52

Mr. Coppee, final remarks for any individuals who currently wear hearing instruments or who are thinking about taking that important first step.

David Coppee: 32:02

I think you just have to do it, there is no other reason to put it off. I can only think of how much better the quality of my work, my family life, and everything else would have been if I had gotten motivated sooner. In fact, we've we've joked around that I have a special setting on my hearing aids was called wife mode. So I could automatically you know, turn off the volume.

Blaise Delfino: 32:25

I did not suggest that by the way. That

David Coppee: 32:27

No, no, that was me, I suggested that and, and we was all you! have and we laugh about that because we know how important it is to hear what's going on.

Blaise Delfino: 32:37

Very important.

David Coppee: 32:38

It is a family. It is truly a family here and it's a wonderful environment, you know, and just to come in, go through a hearing test, find out what's going on, and get the education so you can make an educated decision is above and beyond. Probably the most important thing you can do.

Blaise Delfino: 32:57

Ladies and gentlemen, you're tuned into the hearing matters podcast with Dr. Gregory Delfino and Blaise Delfino of Audiology Services and Fader Plugs. On today's show, we had Mr. David Coppee join us. Until next time, hear life's story.