Batteries

Source: https://pixabay.com/de/batterie-batterien-wiederaufladbare-1821/ Lizenz: CC0 Public Domain / FAQ

Last weekend we had a nice and quiet time. After all the adventures of the past few weeks, I just needed to get some sleep and spend the day quietly. Of course, on such days, it is on me the sweet duty to cook, but I like to do that and I am sure that we eat healthy food.

Since I talk to my mother on the phone almost daily, I also called her on Sunday. Just as we were on the phone, one of my hearing aids wanted to warn me that the battery was running low. Hearing aid wearers know the signal very well: a few short beeps in succession. If the battery on your ear goes out of use when you are talking on the phone, this is not very pleasant. Sometimes it takes an hour after the first warning signal, sometimes the battery is dead immediately. My mother and I therefore kept our conversation short and I quickly replaced the empty battery for a new one.

My hearing aid batteries last about a week. When I’m on the road, I always carry batteries with me because I never know exactly when one (or both) of them will run out. Most often, this happens at the most impossible moments: during sports, in conversations, on the street, where changing is not completely harmless: you need both hands to get a new battery out of your handbag, remove the sticker, take out the hearing aid and replace the batteries, whereas during these actions you don’t want to drop the hearing aid!

In short: if you don’t happen to be sitting quietly on the couch at home or somewhere at the table, the battery change asks a certain amount of skill. Of course, I am a very experienced battery changer nowadays and master this ability in almost every situation, but it also happens to me that the battery slips out of my fingers. The batteries for my hearing aids are so small that they fall loose when the stickers are stripped off! And when they fall, you can hardly find them back because they are small and round and can roll anywhere. By experience, I’ve learned that I need to carry a few spare batteries, just in case of course. Nevertheless, it is a pity if you lose one, because these batteries are expensive and you have to pay for them yourself.

Only when it really matters and I know that the batteries are almost empty and changing them is difficult on a certain occasion, I change the batteries before. Fortunately, this is a rare occurrence. Changing batteries in public sometimes attracts a little attention. Like in public transport, restaurants or something. But I’ve learned not to take any notice of it. It would ultimately attract more attention if I were to walk around without batteries, i. e. without hearing aids that work!