That’s a theory that doesn’t always hold true, 35 Whelen. I’m in the process of trying to get the VA to buy me a set of hearing aids right now. I drove down to Logan, Utah (about 70 miles south of here) for an appointment with another audiologist yesterday. The first audiologist the VA sent me to just confirmed that I have hearing loss, and that it could have started with my time in the Navy. While the audiologist the VA sent me to yesterday ran different tests to tell the VA how much, and what type(s) of hearing loss I have.
At any rate, because I was struggling with
some hearing loss way back in the ‘80s, the company I was working for as a maintenance electrician back then sent me to an audiologist.
That audiologist said almost the same thing to me your audiologist said to you. He said, “The results of the tests I ran tell me three things about you. First, you do a lot of shooting, probably with large bore handguns. Second, you’re left-handed. And third, you don’t wear hearing protection when you shoot.”
I told him, “Well doc, one out of three ain’t bad!
I AM a large bore handgun shooter, but I’m
right-handed, and I
always wear hearing protection when I’m shooting handguns.”
Of course,
that audiologist was in the pocket of the company I was working for back then, so he wasn’t about to admit he was wrong. But I wasn’t trying to get the company to buy me a set of hearing aids anyway. The fact is, I’ve had two audiologists in the past month tell me my hearing loss probably started with my spending better than 1,200 hours underneath two 1,500 horsepower jet turbine engines - Navy choppers, 1968-1972.
However, I won’t be all that upset if the VA decides they won’t buy me a set of hearing aids. I’m going to be 75 years old in a few months - I can probably get by for what time I’ve got left on this Earth without hearing aids. And if I can’t, I’ll buy them myself. Either way, I’m not going to start shooting left-handed, and I
will keep putting on my “ears” when I know I’m going to be shooting a handgun.