stolen processor

Unfortunately my bag was stolen from the beach in Bournemouth last Sunday, with the processor in it. I went down for the day with my housemates David and Laura. We left our 3 backpacks and towels on the beach, squeezed our 3 wallets into Laura's tiny shoulder bag and went for a walk along the beach. On our return the bags were gone. We'd left them in front of the lifeguards' hut, in an area surrounded by people. It was probably naive of us in retrospect as after all Bournemouth is a big city, adjacent to the beach. The annoying thing is, I did think of trying to fit the small brown hearing aid case I carry it around in, into Laura's satchel. There didn't look like being room and I was partly worried about it getting wet or getting sand in it and thought that the inside pocket of my back pack was the safest place for it..which it wasn't.

It being NHS property, I am not liable for it. The hospital made no fuss at all and sent me a new one in the post, to my work. They don't have any insurance on it, and it isn't covered by my travel insurance as it was only a day trip. I wonder how much money they lose through lost or damaged processors. I picture 3-year-olds tossing their processor into flower beds, but never imagined I would lose mine. Oh dear.

Not only was the processor in my bag but so was the hearing aid which I wear on my right ear. So I had to report that to my local hospital as well. I didn't go there until Thursday, as it was a busy week, and I had the hearing aid I used to wear on the left/implanted ear, so on Monday I went to work wearing it on my right ear. When I first put in on I thought, wow, I can hear much better with this than I could with the other hearing aid. But then I got tinnitus, a loud ringing noise in my ear. I was on my bike and, startled, looked around for an ambulance or police car but no sign of any. The ringing lasted after I turned the aid off so I knew then that it was tinnitus, and put it down to the settings being to high for that ear to tolerate. It died out and when I wore the hearing aid again in the office it was ok - it must have been the traffic noise that triggered it.

Interestingly, for the next 3 days I felt a sense of relief, as I didn't have to put up with the bothersome loud noises the processor would pick up: phones ringing, people chattering, the TV, sheets coming out of the printer like machine-gun fire. Then I noticed that I wasn't picking up the sounds that were actually useful to me either: the sound of my manager's phone, mobile, voice from behind the partition facing me. That made me realise there was more of an improvement with the processor than I had thought.

On Thursday the new processor arrived and putting it on was a shock - it was like putting a radio on at full blast with lots of static. But I have got used to it again now. The process of screening out the background noise is just taking me time, hearing people have had a lifetime to do that. On the same day I dropped in at the local hospital and they transferred the settings that were on the stolen hearing aid to the one I am using now. But I still experienced tinnitus so have chosen not to wear it at all for a bit. I'd normally wear it just on the bike journey to work and back, switching to the processor as soon as I was off my bike. The reasons being a. the processor would pick up both near and distant traffic, making me feeling stressed out with all the noise, as if I were contantly pursued by cars, b. I'd worry about the processor falling off onto the road, and c. I have scraped a bit out of the shell of my bike helmet but it still pushes the magnet about a bit, resulting in sound cutting on and off, which is uncomfortable - the sudden switching off makes me feel a sligt, passing sickness.