It was time for me to ditch my mismatched hearing aids and consider new ones. On one ear, I was sporting an old hearing aid with a missing battery door cover. On the other ear, I was wearing a hand-me-down hearing aid from one of the kids. I just figured I was so deaf that new hearing aids wouldn't make much of a difference.

I finally reached a breaking point while working on a project with a friend and my hearing aid was producing feedback sounds that I couldn't even hear. Every time I went to hug someone, the hearing aid would announce its annoying existence by producing a squealing sound.

So off I went to Sertoma in Romeoville to meet the audiologist, Christine Woodall. We were joined by Dawn Ruley, from Phonak. Both Dawn and Christine have worked with my kids for years and all three now have Phonak hearing aids, so I figured it was my turn.

Today's hearing aids are nothing like the ones from ten years ago. The first decision I encountered was a choice of colors– two shades of blue, pink, red, purple and even a giraffe pattern. I settled for a transparent/silver casing. The techno look was cool enough to be noticed, yet subtle enough to blend in with my wardrobe. A girl has to consider those things, you know.

Christine hooked up the hearing aids to a computer program which matched the sounds to my hearing loss. One of the neat, new features is the ability for the hearing aid to take high sounds that I can't hear and convert them to lower sounds that I can hear. This meant that I could hear new sounds that I hadn't heard before. "When you leave the office, listen for a humming noise in the lobby," said Christine. Sure enough, I was able to pick out a humming sound that I had never heard in all the years of going to Sertoma.

Today's hearing aids are like mini Cadillacs– with lots of bells and whistles to customize sounds. There was a long list of specialized sound programmings to choose from, but I stuck with the simple ones to experiment with, such as the zoom feature in noise and the music feature.

However, there is a feature on the Phonak hearing aids that is priceless. Every time the kids come up to me and ask, "Mom, can I have some money for…"

There's a mute button for that.

Sorry, kids, I didn't hear you.