Published: July 8, 2016 - A3
The difference for Addison man is audible
262-306-5043
TOWN OF ADDISON — Jon Haldemann’s telephone rang and rang and rang.
Frightened and nervous — almost reluctant — he picked it up.
It was a struggle for more than 25 years.
“Either when I was talking on the phone, I couldn’t get the phone in the right spot to hear people because the microphone was above the ear I had to have the phone in a weird position,” he said. “I couldn’t just stick it onto my ear.
“A lot of times if I got in the right spot, it would cause a squeal. ... I absolutely dreaded talking on the phone.”
Innovative technology now has him comfortable on the phone and in life, called the Baha 5 SuperPower Sound Processor.
It is the first super-power bone conduction solution with smart, direct-to-device wireless technology for patients.
Cochlear Ltd. of Centennial, Colorado, the company that designed the technology, announced in March the innovation had received clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
“It means that the people who need it most can now benefit from a device that not only provides the amplification they need, but the ability to connect wirelessly to their favorite electronic devices, including smartphones and TVs,” said Tony Manna, North America president of Cochlear Ltd.
Technology on his phone helps Haldemann control the volume based on his surroundings. In March, about 50 people in the United States and Europe had been fitted for it, including Haldemann. He was alerted to the project years earlier.
“I hear more now than I did before,” Haldemann said.
About two years ago, Haldemann became the first person in Wisconsin to get the Baha Attract System, a bone conduction hearing system designed to leave the skin intact. It uses a magnetic connection to attract the sound processor to the implant in the head, sending sound to the inner ear without anything breaking the skin.
His hearing improved, but a problem lingered.
“My hearing loss was so great, I had it cranked up so much that it was squealing,” Haldemann said. “It didn’t matter to me I couldn’t hear it, but everybody else around me could hear the feedback.”
It was like putting a microphone in front of a speaker. Thus, it was a struggle to find a balance — a balance to where he could hear and it not being annoying to those around him.
On June 23, Cochlear’s Baha 5 SuperPower Sound Processor was released. Haldemann got his six weeks before then.
“I’ve always been the guy that said, ‘Hey, if you want to try something, try it on me,’” Haldemannsaid.
He added, as a bird chirped from a nearby tree, he always knew he was hearing something. He just didn’t know what it was.
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Haldemann struggled with hearing since he was a preteen. The tipping point came when he was in high school.
Sitting in class — college prep algebra — as a freshman at Slinger High School, he began to think people were playing tricks on him.
“I couldn’t hear anybody,” Haldemann recalled. “It was like everybody was whispering.”
Doing what he thought was the right thing, his teacher asked him a question.
“I couldn’t hear anything so I was like, ‘Sure,’” Haldemann said.
The whole class cracked up.
“That I heard,” he said, adding the teacher got mad. “She asked me another question and I said, ‘Uh huh.’ “I had no idea what she was saying. I couldn’t read her lips because I had no practice in reading lips.”
Haldemann was taken into the hallway. He knew he was in trouble because he could see the teacher’s lips moving and the facial expressions.
Problem was he had no idea why.
“After about 30 seconds of chewing me out, she looks at me and stops, she gets real close and she goes, ‘Can you hear anything I’m saying?’” Haldemann said. “I said, ‘No.’” That was the first time Haldemann realized there was a problem. The same went for others around him.
“It was like it finally went over the tipping point,” Haldemann said.
He went to the office and that’s when Haldemann’s life went a different direction.
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In one of his first doctor visits, Haldemann’s doctor thought it was fluid buildup in the ears.
Haldemann’s mother was a medical transcriptionist and knew of a doctor she thought could help through a series of several exams. He suggested a stapedectomy.
At 15 years old, Haldemann had the stapedectomy, a surgical procedure of the middle ear performed in order to improve hearing.
“I had hearing aids until I was about 28 or 29 (years old) when laser surgery came around,” Haldemann said. “I was set up for laser surgery, went in, they opened my ear up and said, ‘Wow. That’s really bad.’ And they closed it back up.”
Haldemann added, “I have the worst case of otosclerosis any of the doctors have ever seen.”
According to the National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, otosclerosis is caused by abnormal bone remodeling in the middle ear. Abnormal remodeling — or in Haldemann’s case, a calcium buildup — disrupts the ability for sound to travel from the middle ear to the inner ear. Otosclerosis affects more than three million Americans.
Over the years, he’s had several procedures on both ears and hearing aids to try to help him. The results were temporary. Six to eight weeks after the stapedectomy, his hearing faded.
“I still needed hearing aids,” Haldemann said, adding the change was like “flipping a switch.”
Because of high costs and lack of insurance support, Haldemann spent much of his teenager years with one hearing aid and getting by as best he could with the muffled hearing in the ear that didn’t have the aid.
In the 1980s, hearing aids were $800 to $1,000 each. According to a recent survey published by the Hearing Review, the average price of a mid-level pair of aids is between $4,000 and $4,500.
In college, he learned about Division Vocational Rehab that helped finance hearing aids every three years while in the program.
But once out of college, it was back to cash out-of-pocket.
Since then, he’s done hours of research to find the best possible aid to fit his budget.
“I was a master at making my hearing aids last,” Haldemann said.
On average, hearing aids last three to five years. Haldemann stretched them five to seven years.
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What’s the hearing like now?
Well, it depends on which way one looks at it. Haldemann has a sense of humor about it.
“There’s now things that I hear that are annoying because I’m not used to hearing them,” he said.
Among those things are conversations or cars come down the street before they pass the house.
“We have loud typers at work, which never used to bother me,” said Haldemann, a systems administrator for Batteries Plus Bulbs.
“It’s a lot of little things I never knew I was hearing,” he added.
However, he wouldn’t want it the other way. Frankly, he’s tired of the alternative.
“Now I feel like I’m not stressed out because I can’t hear,” Haldemann said.
His wife of 20 years, Wendy, also has a sense of humor about her husband’s hearing.
“You also have selective hearing,” she joked, looking at him. “He still has that.”
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