I had to go to the audiologist today. I pay for supplemental hearing, dental, and eye insurance, because regular insurance doesn’t pay for the things that actually keep you from getting demented, depressed, and feeble.

Before I left, I couldn’t find the insurance card I had just used at the dentist. It wasn’t in my wallet. It wasn’t in the wallet I use for the cards I don’t usually carry with me. It wasn’t anywhere.

I realized I was singing, “Lost and gone forever, oh my darling, Clementine” out loud.

Finally, I gave up and printed a card out from the insurance company website, and I ordered another wallet card while I was at it. I was rather pleased I knew how to get into the insurance company website; that has not always been the case.

As I was leaving, I found the lost card. It was clipped to the inside of my front door, where I had put it so I wouldn’t forget it.

Even though it says right there on the card that it covers hearing, dental, and vision, it probably doesn’t. I have never gotten anything out of it except at my new dentist last week. My new dentist has people who spend all their time figuring out insurance and are good at their jobs.

I checked in at the audiologist under the big CHECK IN HERE sign I missed at first because there was a check-in tablet in the entryway that I was apparently supposed to ignore. 

The desk clerk said something in a quiet, sweet voice. I leaned forward with my hand cupped to my ear, and she repeated herself in the same quiet voice. 

It is a practice for the hard of hearing. 

She did not ask me for my insurance card. It’s already in their portal, where I uploaded a photograph of it before I clipped it to the front door.

After I took a seat, the clerks began to talk to one another in even more hushed tones, though I did make out my last name several times. 

Moderate hearing loss like mine is normal for people my age, and it’s possible to get by without aids, but the world mumbles more and more and you sort of stop listening.

Then the clerks called me up in a louder voice, and told me I hadn’t gotten an order from my primary care doctor for the hearing test. It’s all one huge sprawling medical organization with a single name jammed on its many, many offices, and besides Medicare doesn’t require prior authorization.

Yeah, so I hadn’t asked for an order. I just went, and I hoped.

It turned out it was fine for me to see the audiologist without an order, but I needed an order for the hearing test she had to give me so she could sell me hearing aids, because reasons.

I’m not seeing the primary care doctor for a month, though, and my primary care doctor’s office never answers the phone when I call. There is a web portal, and I have used it to get answers before, but it takes a while and is confusing. However, when the audiology clerk called my primary doctor’s office, they did answer. The clerk must have the fancy number. 

The clerk told me I would have to wait until the order came through, so I sat in the empty waiting room (there was one other patient in the whole two hours I was there) and I did some work on my phone.

An hour later the order came through and I was permitted to take a hearing test where I had to listen to faint beeps and to an officious man saying implausible words I was supposed to repeat. I have taken this test many times before.

Afterwards, the audiologist programmed her demo hearing aids and put them in my ears to make sure they worked, and while I could hear her, she explained all the possible prices of all the possible aids I can get, showing me some colorful printouts.

The costs ranged from dire to heinous. I expected that.

It was not clear from the pamphlet what made any of the aids different from one another. AI was involved in some cases. “I am now officially confused,” I remarked, and the audiologist patiently said the same things over again.  I chose moderately dire-costing aids from the pamphlet at random, because I have money in the bank. 

Since I lost my last aid, I have been using Apple AirPod Pros as hearing aids. They work fine, but they are conspicuous, their battery life isn’t as long as a hearing aid, and they fall out sometimes. I am not someone who should depend heavily on anything that falls out. 

The last time I lost my hearing aid, it was at Front and Girard where the drug addicts stand (and sometimes die) on the corners. The aid just popped out when I got off the bus, and I couldn’t find it, though I searched the intersection (under the elevated train) for a while, under the uncaring eyes of a number of sad thin shabby people.

I go back in two weeks to get my new hearing aids, which will be a nice invisible flesh tone. I had ones like that before. Nobody knew I was wearing them, and once I was accused of mocking a deaf friend because I said I was deaf too.

The inconspicuousness was why I couldn’t find the one I lost at Front and Girard.

“Don’t get old,” I said to the audiologist, and then said, “No, no, I mean do get old, but be prepared,” and she laughed politely because when she is old she will be a different person entirely, she thinks. She is three years out of school, where she decided on audiology instead of speech pathology.

I briefly considered a career in speech pathology and then remembered I am old, and have money in the bank. I also have a Ph.D. and a retirement chair with my name on it, so I do not need to go to school for anything or get a job.

When I was her age, I had perfect eyesight, perfect hearing, and perfect teeth except for that one tooth. 

As I was leaving, I realized the audiologist had forgotten to take her office hearing aids back, so I handed them hastily to the clerk. 

I am doing all the health things this summer, as one does. They seem to pile up, and then I spend several weeks wandering to medical offices of various sorts. Tomorrow I go to the dentist for a follow-up appointment. I asked my new dentist last week why my prior dentist hadn’t suggested fixing the teeth she’s going to repair tomorrow. “I have thirty years experience, and my focus is on making sure you still have working teeth in twenty years,” she said.

Twenty years seems like a long time.

I will be an entirely different person then.