RIKKI POYNTER: Hello, welcome back to the channel where we talk about disability,
accessibility technology,
YouTube, all of those things under one umbrella,
and today I'm going to tell you finally about the process
of me getting these little new hearing aids for free.
As you may or may not know,
for the first time in 30 years, I have hearing aids.
Yep, the first pair of hearing aids ever,
or at least one that is mine and programmed for me.
People have been asking me for years throughout my YouTube career,
"Why don't you have hearing aids?"
And it's always been never really felt like I needed them,
because, you know, I'm by myself 99.9% of the time.
And if I'm doing work things, I would have
an interpreter with me or captions,
depending on what I'm doing.
Also, there was the financial stuff.
These things are expensive, not just the hearing aids themselves,
but the upkeep, always going to the appointment and things like that.
And it just wasn't in my favor.
So I just simply never got them,
I never got them as a kid, never got them until now.
And if learning about deafness, accessibility,
et cetera et cetera is your thing, go ahead, subscribe to this channel.
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help me out with the battery cost of these things,
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and you get exclusive content every month.
More exclusive content.
I say that jokingly, but also not.
So the very first thing that I did was email VR or VRS,
depending on whatever acronym you want to use.
So the very first thing I did is I emailed VR or VRS,
whichever acronym that you want to use and VR or VRS
stands for vocational rehabilitation services.
And essentially what they're for is they
help deaf people get jobs, hearing aids,
any sort of supplies that they need for their business,
they can help go to school.
I'm pretty sure they help with getting
interpreters for things and stuff.
I mean, they helped me get interpreters for my appointments.
So yeah, it just kinda came in.
It just kinda came with that package, right?
Then if you're disabled, if you have a disability other than deafness,
you know, they'll help you out with other things.
I've heard about VR before.
People had told me about VR before,
but me being the excess person that I am,
I just never really emailed them.
But finally, last year around April, yeah,
I think it was April when this whole thing first started.
I finally bite the bullet because somebody was like,
just email VR, like, just do it, you know?
So I said, OK, what you do is you just Google VR or
vocational rehabilitation services or whatever,
and your city, your state is gonna pull up local one
or at least in your county or state or whatever.
And find a contact form and you just put in a little something,
just a little intro,' hi,
I'm looking for some services,' wait until they email back,
and that's when everything starts.
So my counselor emailed me back and essentially
she was just asking me, "OK, well, who are you?
What do you need and what do you need them for?" So I was explaining,
I'm looking into getting hearing aids.
I never had hearing aids before.
I could never afford them, although I likely would have benefited,
that's what my audiologist from when I was a kid told me.
And you know, I started to struggle a lot more with in the past couple
of years since my hearing has pretty much gone down to nothing.
Now in the last couple of years, you know,
it's getting harder to edit my videos and I speak and most of them,
obviously, even though, as I said before,
I do require interpreters and stuff at work.
Sometimes an interpreter just isn't gonna come.
Either, they're not being hired or running late.
Something happens, things happen.
And it's nice to have that little bit of backup just in case.
And, you know, just for everyday things, you know,
if I'm having a meeting with taxes or just last year
when I had that car that came in handy to have hearing
aids when I was returning my rental car.
It's just little things, right?
Going to conferences and things like that, yes,
I get the interpreter for the panels or
the workshops themselves and any like meetings,
not all of them, but some of them.
But for the networking parties and things like that,
they're not giving me an interpreter.
I have to hire my own and who knows, I'm not paying for that.
And also, it's like a social thing.
So it's work, but it's social.
Now I'm bringing an interpreter around to interpret
for a bunch of (INAUDIBLE) people.
So that's what happens at YouTube parties, I'm just saying.
So having hearing aids would have been beneficial
because the music's just gonna get louder.
It's gonna get harder to communicate or understand
these people and most of the time,
I'm the only deaf person at these things and most of them,
most of the hearing people don't know sign language.
So also, if it ever came a time that I was going to have another job.
So, you know, I also do public speaking, I write for a local newspaper,
I do consult for other businesses that are gonna come in handy.
Having hearing aids is going to come in handy one way or another.
I also work a sort of corporate job now that is remote,
so I don't need this.
But if there was a time that it became a nonremote issue,
a non-remote position,
even though it's a deaf organization, though,
that's what they're gonna be here for.
And that's what I said.
And they were like, Alright, we can continue because that's important.
You need it.
It makes sense.
So here we are.
Then there came the background check and the finance check.
You know, make sure, you know,
not a criminal or something I guess, I don't know,
make sure I was who I said I am or whatever and the financial check,
because if I make over a certain amount,
they're very likely gonna be like,
"Yeah, we can't help you here because we think that you can afford it."
They looked at my bank statements and things like that I believe,
and they're like," Yeah,
we're gonna need to help you with that." So,
once that was all looked through and approved,
then came to the audiogram.
Staff had to send me out to an audiologist and make
sure that I was qualified to receive hearing aids.
And then they had to, you know, talk with the audiologist people,
figure out what kind that they were gonna suggest
to me and how much that was gonna be,
and VR would have to approve that as well.
I went to the audiologist, I had an interpreter,
my amazing 2go interpreter.
I am going to miss it once I move.
Lo and behold, wow, am I deaf?
(CHUCKLING) You know that little lovely rumor that circulated
every couple of months that says "I'm hearing
or I'm listening to that or faking this and that?" Yeah,
let me tell you, my audiologist laughed at you.
On a scientific, on a biological level,
I needed those hearing aids, according to my audiogram.
So, that was done, VR had a look at that and then another couple of
weeks go by and we got approved and we got the ear molds done.
Now I think about I think we did the audiogram.
And then shortly after, we went to the actual other audiologist
or whoever that was in charge of ordering the hearing aids.
I don't know, the actual timeline and specifics of
that is a blur but this is the process, I promise.
So we got the ear molds done.
That was quite the cold experience.
It was kinda fun and a little bit fun.
It was.
It felt weird, but it was.
It was fun.
And as you can see, I got pink ear mold with the black hardware.
So that took a couple of weeks to get that all sorted out.
And you know, with COVID, pressure running low,
supplies of all kinds everywhere of all industries are
running low because of COVID and things like that.
So it was taken a few weeks to get those.
Some people told me that they had to wait months
to get their earmolds and their hearing aids.
I only had to wait about, I wanna say, three weeks.
By August that is when I got to go to the audiologist again
and get the hearing aids, and I got my hearing aids.
And so the process started in April and essentially ended in August.
So that April, May, June, July, August.
So it was a whole four-month process shorter than I was expecting,
going by comments from Twitter.
And I think you did maybe as well, but, Twitter,
because 'deaf twitter' talks about this,
you know, when it gets 'fucked up!'
And ever since then, every couple of months,
I have been going back to the audiologist and,
you know, just doing a little shot.
I had my hearing aids in August, near the end of August.
I wanna say it was the 24th of August and then they
had me play with these, you know, test things out,
train my brain for about two weeks and then go back and see
if I need to readjust the levels of everything which I did,
especially in this ear, because the difference is so dramatic, like,
good luck getting any sound into this one and also
good luck getting any sound into this one.
But it's a better chance than this one,
but you're maxing out the volume on everything and risking speakers,
just blowing out and breaking out at this point.
So that too many checkups were done.
And then essentially every three months,
I would come back get the tubes changed because,
you know, they start to get a little bit
hard and the audio doesn't go through.
And I had my appointment today,
which would have been my last appointment before I move.
But I'm doing another last-minute appointments checkup just in case,
like right before I move just a couple of days before I move.
And then right this came about a year of free audiologist appointments.
So, I will have, I am supposed to have another couple of months left,
but I'm gonna have to figure out VR in California and email
them and see how we can transfer that stuff over,
if we can or if we have to continue as a whole new file thing.
I'll worry about that once I get over there and there is
a bit of a warranty on these things for about a year or so.
And that's has been the process a lot easier than I expected,
a lot faster than I expected.
And you know, it's been getting me through everyday life.
I haven't done a whole lot of like work things because again, COVID,
you know, I don't I haven't done any like in-person work much.
This is just like an everyday thing.
Now I do use used to film.
It makes it a lot easier on my throat because I'm not straining it,
before I would have to strain because I have to talk so loud.
So that way and post, I could hear myself even a little bit without
having to drive the volume up and distorting that and post.
Yeah, it's obvious because my interpreter would be like, "Yeah,
you're talking very loudly all of a sudden now you're hearing aids."
Or even this morning when I took my hearing
aids out to get to the audiologist,
so she could go fix it or exchange the tubes,
put new ones in, she was like,
"Yeah, I can tell you, you got them out because you're like,
practically OK now." See it, is what is there a little
bit loosey-goosey out because of the tubing.
So, after the first year of free audiologist appointments are done,
essentially I'm pretty sure now everything is up to me.
The batteries were already up to me.
I'd get two packs for free, but everything else, you know,
you want batteries, you gotta go get them yourself.
Go buy them at Target.
Go buy at Costco or Amazon or something.
But the appointments are going to be a lot more now
because I do not have health insurance anymore.
I had it for a year and then just recently went out,
so I have to figure out what to do about that.
Specialist cost out of pocket or heavily friendly I should say.
That's essentially the process.
I believe that is everything.
I don't believe I left anything out.
But if you do have any questions, feel free to lead them down
below in the comments and I'll get back to you in a reply.
I may also answer the questions on Tik Tok.
So, if you don't follow me already on Tik Tok, which is just my name,
feel free to follow me on there and I might answer there
as well because that always makes for good content.
If you ended up getting hearing aids from VR or anything else,
you get a job through VR, some other supplies for your business,
or whatever, let me know what your experiences
were through VR or with VR.
And down below, somebody else had the question, you know,
and you might have an answer to it,
we can help each other out in that regard, right?
If you made it to the end of this video, thank you very much.
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Thank you for watching.
I very much appreciate it, and we'll see you later.
Bye.