Advice Needed - Adjusting To Has With Severe Sound Sensitivity.

[appleeater]

Thanks for your reply audiofuzzy - it wasn't SSD but I was given steroids until they'd established otherwise.

My bone conduction looked much the same as usual (5dB lower in two of four) frequencies which I'm going to keep an eye on since I've been going consistently downwards within normal fluctuations for a while) so they think it's a conductive loss. They're going with glue ear/otitis media with effusion since my tympanometry results were flat (extremely limited vibration of the ear drum) and my drum was sucked inwards.

I think he couldn't believe that glue ear could cause complete deafness (or, at least beyond that my hearing aids or environment were providing) since typically it only causes muffle. My suspicion is that because it was mixed loss rather than just conductive the effect was different.

A small amount of the hearing has come back already and I actually got my fitting of hearing aids brought forward so I'm now armed with a new set which are much better at handling background noise. Now waiting for a new mould because even with the more advanced feedback reduction the new set whistle (albeit less than my old set turned up). Unfortunately, in their classic chaotic state they hadn't actually passed on that I was there for glue/had been squeezed in urgently to audiologist who was fitting. Thankfully said audiologist was very accommodating.

 

[ecp]

Latest in my saga: Glue Ear.

At around 10am on Thursday, I lost all hearing in my left ear except a tinnitus type hiss that was so quiet I wasn't sure I could hear it. Even my hearing aids produced nothing. I was also in severe pain. At about 1:30pm, I regain a small amount of hearing - just sounds that I couldn't make sense of even with my hearing aids and a relief from the pain. Without my hearing aids I was unable to tell if someone had stopped or started speaking in a quiet room and with them I was able to hear the very loud chatter of 28 children but only as a very quiet noise. I certainly couldn't tell one sound from another.

My wife insisted on me going to A&E and the doctor said there was no sign of an ear infection and gave me prednisone and told me to come back at 11am on the next day for further testing.

This morning (Friday), I regained a little more hearing. With my hearing as good as it had been since I lost it, my bone conduction audiogram came in as almost normal (only a few places 5dB worse than they'd ever been before but not the concern of the professionals at the time) whereas my air conduction showed a 20dB further loss pushing most of my frequencies between 60 and 70dB.

The ENT nurse showed absolutely no deaf awareness - he kept speaking from behind me and then gave my wife a dirty look for signing what he was saying to me. He also refused to believe that I could have lost all my hearing and kept telling me that I must have perceived it as such because of the imbalance between my ears (even though the problem persisted with my "good" ear covered).

He kept giving me all sorts of conflicting information including that 10dB wasn't much difference (even though he and I had read the audiogram as 20dB) and kept giving me different amounts of time I needed to come back in or take treatment for.

He had me blow with my nose pinched and it seems to have made my ears a bit worse. Grr. Anyway, with any luck it will resolve soon.

In the end, he gave me two types of nasal drops - one for a week and one for a month. I also insisted on having my hearing aids updated. He didn't want to because he said it wasn't a priority since it should be temporary but my wife and I insisted that I can't do my job without them. (I work with young children.) I'm going to take off my M+T setting and replace it with a higher volume so that if I do recover between now and 8th August (I'm finally getting a hearing aid upgrade!) then I can just switch back to normal.

As an amusing aside, with this newly moderate-to-severe hearing loss I tried out the specsavers hearing screening app and scored "normal"! This was even with having my wife adjust the volume to her hearing so I wouldn't skew it. Though, the reason we were taking it was because we suspect she might have a slight loss, so who knows?

At least glue ear goes away. Probably 8 times in my life I woke up with no hearing in one or the other ear. Eventually I had nothing in either. It was terrifying to tell professors that my "good ear" was totally Deaf all of the sudden. I went to the college health clinic who always sent me to a doctor in town but I never had an infection or SOM (glue ear aka thick mucus behind the eardrum without an infection). It was always, "well, this is how it is for you" sometimes I recovered 5 or 10 dB but speech was messed up. (And when this started happening I already had severe hearing loss (80-90dB).