So it’s finally been confirmed, the reason for my hearing loss is due to this condition known as Menieres, I like to call it many ears, just to be ironic. We went to visit an ENT specialist in San Juan on Friday who listened to the description of my problem, he had a look in my ears, and had me say ahhhhhhh, which proved he was a real doctor, whilst he peered into my throat checking my tubes and concluded that Menieres was the most likely cause of my fluctuating hearing loss. Of course I had been hoping that he would come up with a different diagnosis, something that could be cured, but it wasn’t to be.

He spent almost an hour with me explaining what was going on and how I might alleviate the symptoms. Cut out salt and as much as possible, avoid, caffeine and alcohol which may help to at least stabilise the hearing loss to where it is at the moment.
As I already knew there’s no known medical cure for Menieres, and no known cause, and so paying attention to my diet seems to be the only way they know to combat any deterioration. So it’s goodbye to lots of yummy stuff, it’s always the yummy stuff, and farewell to tea and coffee. Maybe we’ll try the de-caf stuff. As for alcohol, well he did put that at the end of his list, below caffeine, and a long way below salt and he never mentioned rum.

We spent a while talking about hearing aids. His take on this was that although there are some very sophisticated bits of kit out there they have to be programmed by an audiologist who has the equipment to do this. And as we are travelling to some exotic locations the possibility of a local audiologist having exactly the right equipment to do this would be unlikely. Perhaps when we finish our adventures and settle somewhere, then that would be the time to consider some snazzy programmable hearing aid, where I could liaise with an audiologist, when I needed to. He suggested the old fashioned talk box that pops in your top pocket would be ideal for now.

A few months ago, whilst researching about Menieres I came across an article by a classical musician who also did quite a bit of recording, he also had Menieres. He had discovered that he could use his iphone as a pretty sophisticated hearing aid. He had a mic, made by Blue, called a Mickey that plugged into the iphone, and a couple of sound apps that are available to download for next to nothing. He reckoned that this bit of kit often performed better than his expensive hearing aid. I mentioned this to the ENT consultant who thought it sounded like an ideal temporary solution for me whilst were sailing.

So I went online to buy and iphone and a mickey; silly name.

Now I’m not really up to speed on mobile phones, and iphones are another country/planet altogether. The only phone we have is very basic and cheap, bought whilst we were in the Dominican Republic, and only works there, since we’ve been sailing we’ve been phoneless.

I put iphones for sale into the Google task bar, and within less than a second I had three hundred thousand results, or was it three million. Anyway, I scan down the list on the first page. It would appear I can buy an new iphone 4, or a 4S, or a 5C or a 5S or the latest iphone which is, surprise surprise called an iphone 6 with no C or an S in sight, at least not yet.

This was going to be a bit more tricky than I thought and prices range from about $100 for an iphone 4, refurbished, whatever that means, to about $600 for a number 6. We used to smoke No 6 when I was a teenager, they were very small, tasted awful and were the cheapest ciggy you could buy, but I digress.

I decide to check out this mic, “the mickey” by blue, just to make sure it’s still available, before I plunge into the murky waters of which iphone is best for me. I find a picture of the “Mickey” on the Blue mics website, so it’s still available. This is the latest version, it says, with a lightening connector so it’s compatible with the latest iphones, but the old 30 pin version is also still available if you’ve got an old iphone. Of course I’m now getting confused, but not half as confused as when I surf back to the iphone comparison website and start reading all about the 4, 4S, 5C, 5S and iphone 6.

Do I want a GSM or LTE network or do I want IOS 8, CMSA or something like that. Do I want to be locked, or unlocked, do I need face time or Siris, an 8 or 12 megapixel camera, brushed aluminium or plastic case and a million other meaningless technical bits of information that might as well be written in Chinese for all the sense they’re making. Does anyone understand all this stuff ‘cause I don’t, I just want an iphone that I can use as a hearing aid and nowhere in all this gumph does it even mention this, so as you can imagine I’m getting pretty confused. Of course we might also like to use this gadget as a mobile phone, and that complicates matters further. Do I want to be with AT&T or T Mobile, or with Verizon or Sprint, or none of the above.

And then at the end of this long and confusing article I come across a pearl of wisdom. It would appear that if you want to use a local network in some far flung island then the cheapest way to do this is to buy a SIM card from the local network and just swap it for the one you have in your phone. But, the latest iphones use the new nano SIM and these are often not available in more remote places, like where we’re likely to be. If you have an older version of the iphone, like a 4 or 4S then they use a regular size SIM which you’re much more likely to find.

So that sort of wrapped it up for me, and I decided that the 4S was the one I should buy along with an older version of the “Mickey” with the 30 pin connector instead of the one with the lightening plug. It only took me about 48 hours of research to hit the buy button on ebay. With any luck I’ll have them both by the end of the week.

How long it’s going to take to figure out how to use is of course another question altogether, because I’m going to have to figure out how to download one of these sound apps.

That’s if I can work out how to turn it on.