I've been fighting this since late October and thought I'd share this with you in case it happens to you or someone you know. The sooner you get treatment, the better your chances are of recovering most of your hearing.
I'm an early riser usually up between 4 and 4:30 each morning due to working third shift for 30 years. I don't usually sleep but about 4 or 5 hours a night. On October 23 I got up as usual and pulled up RTB to do my normal morning reading when I noticed, just all of a sudden, my ears feeling "full" or like I just went up a mountain and my ears needed to "pop". I opened my mouth to "pop" or relieve the pressure I felt and both ears popped. Everything seemed back to normal and I surfed the net until my wife got up a couple of hours later.
When she started talking I could just barely hear her. She has accused me of having selective hearing anyway and thought I was joking with her. My right ear was completely dead and my left side better but not normal hearing. She's a retired RN so she has all the medical gadgets they use and had one of those scopes to look into ears. I have had excessive ear wax before but not this time.
We called at 9 a.m. to make an appointment with our ENT doctor and couldn't get in for two days. In the meantime we went about our normal daily activities. My hearing remained about the same. When the ENT did a hearing test, my right ear showed 95% loss of hearing and 40% in my left. He prescribed a 21 day round of steroids and another appointment 2 weeks later. During that appointment another hearing test showed my right ear had improved by 5% and my left remained the same. The cause is really unknown. the link I included gives some possible causes but he said very seldom can the cause be pinpointed.
He said another treatment would be to inject the steroids directly into my eardrum but studies show sometimes that does more damage than good 60% of the time. He doesn't suspect a tumor because I have none of the usual side effects of a tumor on the nerve from the ear that goes into the brain. He said 97% of the patients with a tumor will have nausea, dizziness, headaches, blurred vision, etc. I haven't had any of those. Still he said we would do a MRI after the steroids have run their course, just to be sure.
I decided to get a second opinion and their tests showed almost exactly the same % loss and agreed with the steroid treatment my first ENT had prescribed. A week later I tried another ENT and her hearing test showed no improvement in either ear. At that time, I was about a month into this and asked this ENT what are my options.
Hearing aids are about all that's left. She said very few people regain very much of their hearing back if they haven't by this time.
So that's where I'm at. Last Tuesday I ordered a set of hearing aids and I'll tell you that really makes me feel old. Of course at 64 I'm older than the majority here anyway but in good shape otherwise other than my hearing, as far as I know. Here's a link that the ENT gave me just in case you run into needing some info on the subject.
Sudden Deafness
I'm an early riser usually up between 4 and 4:30 each morning due to working third shift for 30 years. I don't usually sleep but about 4 or 5 hours a night. On October 23 I got up as usual and pulled up RTB to do my normal morning reading when I noticed, just all of a sudden, my ears feeling "full" or like I just went up a mountain and my ears needed to "pop". I opened my mouth to "pop" or relieve the pressure I felt and both ears popped. Everything seemed back to normal and I surfed the net until my wife got up a couple of hours later.
When she started talking I could just barely hear her. She has accused me of having selective hearing anyway and thought I was joking with her. My right ear was completely dead and my left side better but not normal hearing. She's a retired RN so she has all the medical gadgets they use and had one of those scopes to look into ears. I have had excessive ear wax before but not this time.
We called at 9 a.m. to make an appointment with our ENT doctor and couldn't get in for two days. In the meantime we went about our normal daily activities. My hearing remained about the same. When the ENT did a hearing test, my right ear showed 95% loss of hearing and 40% in my left. He prescribed a 21 day round of steroids and another appointment 2 weeks later. During that appointment another hearing test showed my right ear had improved by 5% and my left remained the same. The cause is really unknown. the link I included gives some possible causes but he said very seldom can the cause be pinpointed.
He said another treatment would be to inject the steroids directly into my eardrum but studies show sometimes that does more damage than good 60% of the time. He doesn't suspect a tumor because I have none of the usual side effects of a tumor on the nerve from the ear that goes into the brain. He said 97% of the patients with a tumor will have nausea, dizziness, headaches, blurred vision, etc. I haven't had any of those. Still he said we would do a MRI after the steroids have run their course, just to be sure.
I decided to get a second opinion and their tests showed almost exactly the same % loss and agreed with the steroid treatment my first ENT had prescribed. A week later I tried another ENT and her hearing test showed no improvement in either ear. At that time, I was about a month into this and asked this ENT what are my options.
Hearing aids are about all that's left. She said very few people regain very much of their hearing back if they haven't by this time.
So that's where I'm at. Last Tuesday I ordered a set of hearing aids and I'll tell you that really makes me feel old. Of course at 64 I'm older than the majority here anyway but in good shape otherwise other than my hearing, as far as I know. Here's a link that the ENT gave me just in case you run into needing some info on the subject.
Sudden Deafness
Putting all kidding aside,hearing loss is a big deal. The only time I have problem with the ones I wear is when I'm in a room that get loud. Turning them down sometime don't work so I take them out.
