My wife is deaf in one ear as a result of a childhood accident which fractured her skull and destroyed one ear drum. She was led to believe that a hearing aid would be no use, so just lived with partial deafness for many years.
A casual remark during a doctor's appointment about something else led to her being referred to the audiologist at the local NHS hospital. He fixed her up with an NHS hearing aid, which surprised her by being of some benefit, but it was not altogether successful. The battery only lasted about two days, although supplies of free replacements were easily available, which did mean that she was carrying spares around with her all the time.
After a few months, the hearing aid packed up altogether and she had to request a second one, which wasn't much better. So she gave up on the idea of persevering with it.
But then she had fantastic service from our local Specsavers in getting herself referred to the hospital with an eye issue, so she enquired about their hearing aids, and booked a consultation with their hearing specialist.
As luck would have it, he is actually a hearing aid user, so was able to sympathise with her over her partial deafness. We ended up buying hearing aids from Specsavers. Not their cheapest, but not their dearest either. There was not that much difference in price between buying one aid or two, so we opted for two and he configured both of them to fit in her deaf ear, so she has a "spare", which is useful if the hearing tube gets blocked or the (rechargeable) battery runs out. If she ever gets trouble with her "good" ear, one of the aids could be reconfigured to go in that ear.
The main thing is that she finds the aid to be very comfortable, and indeed sometimes even forgets that she is wearing it.
It's not a cheap thing to deal with, but her hearing aid has made an appreciable difference to her quality of life, and for that I say that it has been worth the money.
