Hey there. My name is Sue. My daughter has always been profoundly deaf in her right ear from birth. She (Stevie), 2 weeks before xmas 2009 woke up one morning moderately - severely deaf in her left ear. This has been so life changing and hard to understand why. Her MRI was clear showing no cause. It was sudden.
Presently she is wearing a hearing aid on her left ear which gives her the opportunity to have one on one conversations. Group conversations, listening to tv, music and people in shopping centres and the like are impossible. She says she feels like she has a hammer pounding in her head when she goes out to noisy places. She is also suffering loud tinnitus.
I dont know how to help her, apart from making appointments at every specialist hearing place I can find for as many opinions as we can get, and slowly working out what is and what isnt going to be possible.
Her ear nose and throat specialist says she may benefit from cochlear implant in her right ear and being that she is only 27yrs of age, she may be able to adapt even though she has never heard with her right ear before. The audiologist says implanting the right ear would be of no benefit whatsoever as she has never heard with that ear before and her brain would not recognise anything going to that ear. She (the audiologist) says that Stevie would be better off getting an implant in her left ear. How can a specialist and and audiologist be so opposite in their opinions? I have made an appointment with the Lions Institute for Hearing which isnt till the 8th March......for another opinion and some more advice and hopefully she will have been using her loan hearing aid long enough to know if she is going to get any benefit from it. What a confusing and worrying time. I am going to ask....or at least show Stevie this site because I think she needs to know that she is not the only person her age because at the moment she is lonely and devastated.
Thankyou for allowing me into this forum and for answers i have received so far.
Presently she is wearing a hearing aid on her left ear which gives her the opportunity to have one on one conversations. Group conversations, listening to tv, music and people in shopping centres and the like are impossible. She says she feels like she has a hammer pounding in her head when she goes out to noisy places. She is also suffering loud tinnitus.
I dont know how to help her, apart from making appointments at every specialist hearing place I can find for as many opinions as we can get, and slowly working out what is and what isnt going to be possible.
Her ear nose and throat specialist says she may benefit from cochlear implant in her right ear and being that she is only 27yrs of age, she may be able to adapt even though she has never heard with her right ear before. The audiologist says implanting the right ear would be of no benefit whatsoever as she has never heard with that ear before and her brain would not recognise anything going to that ear. She (the audiologist) says that Stevie would be better off getting an implant in her left ear. How can a specialist and and audiologist be so opposite in their opinions? I have made an appointment with the Lions Institute for Hearing which isnt till the 8th March......for another opinion and some more advice and hopefully she will have been using her loan hearing aid long enough to know if she is going to get any benefit from it. What a confusing and worrying time. I am going to ask....or at least show Stevie this site because I think she needs to know that she is not the only person her age because at the moment she is lonely and devastated.
Thankyou for allowing me into this forum and for answers i have received so far.
to Alldeaf, Sue. 
