Hearing aids run on batteries. They are small, watch sized batteries. The smaller the hearing aid, the smaller the battery. So small that for an arthritic hand they are often extremely hard to manipulate.
There are several different sizes of batteries. Most know them by numbers, I know them by color. This is more than likely due to getting hearing aids at such a young age. To this day I refer to my batteries as brown and orange rather than 12 and 312 (I can't tell you which number belongs to which color). And no one ever knows what I'm referring to.
The life of a hearing aid battery is short: 1-2 weeks on average. If a hearing aid is weak or running at full power it's battery life will be shorter. This is why I am concerned my left hearing aid has an issue: it's going through batteries at a faster rate than normal.
A hearing aid has several different ways to indicate low battery life. For my old analog hearing aids the sound would get softer and softer. These hearing aids had a volume control on them, so I would end up with the volume all the way up before I realized the battery needed to be changed. Some hearing aids will just become quiet when the battery dies. My newest ones beep. When this happens I often turn schizophrenic. The first beep tends to scare me and cause me to jump. The second beep is supposed to come a minute later but often comes immediately. I can be heard saying "all right, all right" mid sentence when my battery starts dying as a start to grab a new battery.
When I was a teenager I once dropped a new battery into a friend's backyard. We had a search party rummaging through the grass looking for the tiny battery. It was the only one I had on me and I was so very happy when it was found!
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