I was wondering if someone could help me?

[jenniepepsi]

Well, I'm glad to hear they did an MRI. An MRI would be able to detect if you had a tumor on the auditory nerve. Of course I don't know what part of your body or ear the MRI was aimed at and I think you already know I don't have a high opinion of either your audi or ENT.

I suggest asking your ENT what the MRI was for -- what conditions it was intended to rule out or rule in. If he doesn't say so on his own, ask if he was able to rule out acoustic neuroma (tumors on the auditory nerve).

Perhaps the MRI showed the condition of your middle ear and inner ear. I would ask about that as well.

ok i will ask. i dont know what the test was for. he sent me to the audiologist, and gave me paperwork to get blood work done and the MRI. im not sure what they were for.

I would also ask for a complete copy of your medical records from both the audi and ENT. This should be a copy of the type of records they would give to another physician and not necc. the copies they tend to give to patients. Its your right to have a copy of those records. Then, at your leisure, you can look up every single word in a medical dictionary online and figure out exactly what they did and what they know so far.

i thought it costs 5c a sheet to get your medical records. until i find work (phlebotomy) i cant afford that yet. unless thats a lie and they are breaking the rules. but i will definately ask them

It may be possible that you have vertigo due to your anxiety issues. Do you have blood pressure issues also? You may have vertigo due to that.

my bloodpressure is always very low. sometimes even too low. im a smoker, and right after a ciggarette my blood pressure gets to normal lol but normally im around 107 over 65.

The ear conditions that I heard of that cause vertigo are auditory nerve tumors and Meniere's. You said that they said you don't have Meniere's. If your hearing loss doesn't fluctuate, that may be why they don't think you have Meniere's -- but I would go ahead and read about this on your own.
There are other ear conditions that can cause vertigo, but I don't remember what they are offhand.

ive looked up Meniere's before, and it seems to match to me, but when i asked the doctor about it he said i dont have it. i dont know if my hearing fluctuates, i never have anything to compare it too. if it does, i cant tell off hand.

In regard to getting an amplifier or very inexpensive hearing aid off the web --

I don't know if that would be a good idea or not, although I certainly understand the temptation.

You want to be sure that you don't get too much amplification because you want to keep the hearing you have.

You also want the hearing aid's gain to be appropriate for your loss. If you don't -- your HA can be very uncomfortable.

That is why it's better to get your hearing aids through an audi, and preferably through an audi that isn't lazy and will do the entire battery of tests that they are suppose to do.

Do you think its likely that you will get a job soon? If you can't get HAs through the Starkey's foundation or from the Lions Club, I wonder if you should try to get a pair with the Care Credit card. If you can pay off your bill in the agreed amount of time -- you won't owe any interest. If you can't -- you will owe a ridicously high amount of interest. If that could possibly happen, well quite frankly its very difficult to recommend going into debt that is very difficult to pay off.

those were my fears as well.
i dont know if i will have a job soon. the problem is right now, the school i went to kicks out several hundred phlebotomy students every 6 months. and thats just ONE school. and there are at least 20 other schools for phlebs out here. i think its just too over saturated with phlebs and MA's and they are ALL looking for jobs at the same time.
i keep putting apps in though, even in other states that i could move to.
and i agree, ive thought about once i have a job i could get a credit card to get the HA (as well as get my cars AC fixed lol) i didnt know lions club did HAs! they got me my new glasses when my old ones broke! i will call them thanks. and i will have to look up what starkey is.

If there was such a thing as an amplifier that only gave you 10 - 20 dbs of gain -- that might be safe for your degree of loss as you described it for a short term solution. I think it would be difficult to verify that was all the amount of gain you were getting and you wouldn't want to jeopardize what hearing you have left.

i agree, and i have a horrible time being able to tell whats an apropriet volume level lol. i would probably end up having it WAY too high.

The reason I asked if your family also had hearing loss was becasue you said you thought you had it from living near an airport. But if that was the case, probably other people in your family (and neighborhood) would have a hearing loss also. Of course genetics can also make one more predisposed to a loss. Basically its not always easy to know why one has a hearing loss unless one has a conclusive diagnostic test. (Sometimes people get genetic tests.) Which reminds me, don't forget to ask the ENT or audi where your hearing loss is located per your audiogram: middle ear, inner ear or both.

it wasnt an air port, my dad is in the navy and was a mechanic on the planes. i used to like hanging out there after schools cause the guys working there would share thier candy and snacks with me while i waited to go home. i dont think there is any actual hearing problems, and my dad tells me i wasnt exposed at the hanger badly enough to cause any problems (he says he doesnt even have any hearing problems and he was there all day every day) so im not sure. and i never went to any music concerts or anything like that. but i do know my ears always hurt when the band played at school if i was too close.

they never told me anything about an ear location. ill ask. im naiive with doctors. just a 'yes sir' type additude, and all he said was verbatem 'you have some minor hearing loss, but nothing to be worried about' and i said 'okay' and he said he would follow up with me again in 6 months and walked out. ill call and see if they can move my appt up to sooner than later and get some more answers

I've read of about 4 different ways people manage their own ear wax -- but again if your ear drum is perforated its not a good idea.

I don't think most doctors will give you a general OK to use those methods because if you do have a hole in your ear drum, you will be making your problem worse and not better.

Just because you didn't have a hole in your ear drum in the past doesn't mean that you wouldn't have a hole in your ear drum in the future.

Personally I don't know that I would risk it, but if you're interested I'll see if I can find a thread in a forum about that topic.

mmm let me look up perforated ear drum and see if i feel like i have any of that kind of problem, and think about looking into ways to clean it out. i thought about rubbing alcohal, but decided against it lol.

what if during showers i just let warm/hottish water run into my ear and then back out again? would that help?


thank you again so much!

 

[Jazzberry]

ok i will ask. i dont know what the test was for. he sent me to the audiologist, and gave me paperwork to get blood work done and the MRI. im not sure what they were for.




i thought it costs 5c a sheet to get your medical records. until i find work (phlebotomy) i cant afford that yet. unless thats a lie and they are breaking the rules. but i will definately ask them

Try to see if you can find a manual for AHCCCS health care providers on line. Then you can look it up yourself to see what the rules are.

If you do decide to ask for a copy of your records and you do have to pay copy charges, don't ask for a copy of the MRIs or any films because that would be expensive. Just ask for copies of the audiograms and notes on your appointments. (Or even pass on the audiogram unless you think the audi gave you an incomplete copy.) The notes probably wouldn't be that many pages. You could get 20 pages of notes for $1.00 at the rate they quoted you -- and if you only had two appts. -- I doubted that they there are that many pages of notes in your medical file.

my bloodpressure is always very low. sometimes even too low. im a smoker, and right after a ciggarette my blood pressure gets to normal lol but normally im around 107 over 65.

I think one of the symptoms of low blood pressure can be dizziness.

ive looked up Meniere's before, and it seems to match to me, but when i asked the doctor about it he said i dont have it. i dont know if my hearing fluctuates, i never have anything to compare it too. if it does, i cant tell off hand.

Gradual hearing loss can be hard to detect. I've heard that for at least some people with hearing loss due to Meniere's, their hearing fluctuates very wildly and they notice it. I don't know if eveyone with Meniere's has that symptom. When you have time, I would do a search for Meniere's in this forum and also the two web sites I gave you upthread.

I suggest if possible getting a copy of your medical records (but not including any film, including the MRI because of expense). Then I would put together a list of questions. One of your questions could be why Meniere's was ruled out.

Since you don't hear well, see if you can e-mail your questions to the doctor or mail them with a stamped self-addressed return envelope. You shouldn't have to wait until your next appt. to get your questions answered. You should be able to get them answered now.

Or sometimes a doctor's office have an arrangement where the first level of questions are answered by a nurse. My primary physician has that arrangement and a free appt. can be made with very little waiting time. If the nurse can't answer the question by reading your records, then he or she can ask the doctor. Maybe your ENT has that same arrangement.

those were my fears as well.
i dont know if i will have a job soon. the problem is right now, the school i went to kicks out several hundred phlebotomy students every 6 months. and thats just ONE school. and there are at least 20 other schools for phlebs out here. i think its just too over saturated with phlebs and MA's and they are ALL looking for jobs at the same time.
i keep putting apps in though, even in other states that i could move to.


and i agree, ive thought about once i have a job i could get a credit card to get the HA (as well as get my cars AC fixed lol) i didnt know lions club did HAs! they got me my new glasses when my old ones broke! i will call them thanks. and i will have to look up what starkey is.

Try doing a search under google and also at this forum. I saw a post about Starkey's foundation for free hearing aids at this forum since I joined less than 2 months ago.

i agree, and i have a horrible time being able to tell whats an apropriet volume level lol. i would probably end up having it WAY too high.




it wasnt an air port, my dad is in the navy and was a mechanic on the planes. i used to like hanging out there after schools cause the guys working there would share thier candy and snacks with me while i waited to go home. i dont think there is any actual hearing problems, and my dad tells me i wasnt exposed at the hanger badly enough to cause any problems (he says he doesnt even have any hearing problems and he was there all day every day) so im not sure. and i never went to any music concerts or anything like that. but i do know my ears always hurt when the band played at school if i was too close.

There's at least two different reasons why your ears could hurt from loud noise like the school band. It could be Hyperacusis, another thing for you to look up. It could be recruitment. A short explanation of recruitment is that people with hearing loss due to a condition in the inner ear, have a narrower range of comfortable hearing than people without a hearing loss. We not only need sounds to be louder (which is well known), our tolerance for loud sounds are also lower (not as well known, but still true). For a longer explanation see this article.

Because of this condition, hopefully your battery of audiogram tests included ones that will tell you your MCL and UCL. You need that information in order to get fitted for hearing aids. The UCL also helps confirm whether your loss is due to something occurring in your cochlear.

they never told me anything about an ear location. ill ask. im naiive with doctors. just a 'yes sir' type additude, and all he said was verbatem 'you have some minor hearing loss, but nothing to be worried about' and i said 'okay' and he said he would follow up with me again in 6 months and walked out. ill call and see if they can move my appt up to sooner than later and get some more answers

I believe our health care system is messed up. I don't think that most audis get enough time to do a full battery of tests, esp if the patient has tinnitus which can make the pure tone tests difficult. ENTs appts often seem rushed also. At medicaid rates, I would bet that appts are probably even more rushed.

That's the reality these days, even with better insurance company coverage. Which is why I believe we are all better off if we become "experts" about our own particular type of hearing condition. Not the whole area, just our particular type is good enough. With that knowledge we can all make better use of our appt. time. And also, quite frankly, it makes it more difficult for a doctor or other medical professional to give us an answer that doesn't make sense. Like when the audi told you that your hearing loss was nothing to worry about. :roll:

Last year I had to make an apt in an area of my health in a hurry without time to do any research first. FWIW, what I've found helpful is I asked the doctor to recommend a web site or something to read about the condition. He did so, and also gave me the nurse's number to call if I had follow up questions with a promise that he would be available to answer any questions that she couldn't answer. Luckily, handling the situation that way worked out well for me.

I don't blame you for feeling the way you do, I think a lot of doctors become expert at subtley trying to make us feel guilty for asking questions so they can hurry the appt. along. But we do have the right to ask questions and to know the exact status of our ears and hearing. So ... my suggestion to you is to get more comfortable asking them questions.

Again, I think you have the right to get the answers to your questions about your recent appts. now. If I were in your situation, I would do my best to get appts with a new audi and a new ENT in 6 months. If your insurance company will allow it, I'd try to get another appt. with a new audi before that. Maybe Starkeys or the Lions club will come through, and wouldn't it be nice to have a reliable audi in place so you could get the right type of HAs for your loss?

mmm let me look up perforated ear drum and see if i feel like i have any of that kind of problem, and think about looking into ways to clean it out. i thought about rubbing alcohal, but decided against it lol.

what if during showers i just let warm/hottish water run into my ear and then back out again? would that help?

I don't feel comfortable giving advice in this area. I did find some old threads about this topic at AD though --

http://www.alldeaf.com/hearing-aids-cochlear-implants/66064-ear-wax.html

http://www.alldeaf.com/hearing-aids-cochlear-implants/52604-itchy-ears.html

thank you again so much!

Not at all. Frankly I appreciate the opportunity to "pay it forward." Many people have helped me in many areas of my life, I doubt I'll ever get to the point where I can call it even.