I’ve posted this to my LiveJournal, but was always planning on posting this here.
I was born severely to profoundly deaf due to maternal rubella. My hearing in the left ear started out with thresholds of 80 dB in the 250 to 8000 Hz range, while my hearing in the right ear started out somewhat worse. I’ve worn hearing aids since I was 18 months old, and have always had unusually good word recognition in the left ear. My right ear, alas, has always been useless for speech understanding.
My hearing remained stable for the first 29 years of my life. Hearing loss resulting from rubella normally remains stable throughout the person’s lifetime.
Until the last week of February, 2003. I went to bed on the evening of the 26th, and woke up the following morning finding my hearing in the left ear significantly decreased.
At first, I was not worried. I assumed something was wrong with either the hearing aid or that there was occlusion of the ear canal by ear wax.
I am an audiologist, so I have ready access to the equipment I needed to test the hearing aid’s function. That morning of February 27, I checked out the hearing aid and found it to be working perfectly. I asked one of my colleagues to look in my left ear, and she found absolutely no ear wax at all. Another test known as tympanometry indicated no significant problems with my middle ear function. An ENT doctor examined the ear and found nothing inside the middle ear space that would cause a hearing decrease, such as fluid.
I started to get concerned. My hearing was tested, and it was found that the thresholds of hearing in my left ear had dropped by about 15 to 20 dB in the low to mid frequencies, with the greater drop towards the low frequency range.
That was when I started to freak out just a tiny bit.
The ENT doctor put me on a three-day regimen of carbogen therapy (high oxygen for 15 minutes, three to four times a day), and a prescription of prednisone. Gradually, my hearing recovered almost to the point where it was before.
Then, in early June, it dropped again. Another round of carbogen therapy. When that did not work, I went back on the prednisone, which I am still taking now and will be taking for the next couple of weeks, although the dosages drop every five days. The hearing has been gradually recovering, just like before.
Throughout all this, the ENT doctors are unsure of what is causing this decrease. The first instance was preceded by a nasty respiratory infection, and I assumed that the most likely cause was a viral infection of the cochlea. However, the second instance was not preceded by any significant illness except for a cold. Many possible causes have been ruled out because my right ear has remained unchanged during this entire ordeal. Ototoxicity, for instance, would cause the hearing in both ears to decrease. In fact, any kind of systemic disorder that would affect both ears has been basically ruled out. An auto-immune disorder is a possibility, but that typically affects both ears. Cochlear Meniere’s is another possibility, and in my mind, the strongest one.
On the night of July 11, while attending Friday evening services at a local synagogue, my left ear began to ring like a bell. Apparently the singing of the congregation was simply not agreeing with my left ear. Somewhat surprising, since music has never bothered that ear before. By the time I got home, I realized that my hearing had dropped again; I have not had any colds or infections at all in the last couple of months. And since then, the ringing tinnitus has been replaced by a roaring tinnitus. Bad sign.
I know my hearing well enough to exactly how it has dropped, even though I won’t be able to test my hearing again until Monday. It has dropped in the low frequencies by at least 20 dB, and possibly 10 to 15 in the mid-frequencies. All in the space of three hours.
This time, the sound quality has been drastically affected as well. I can no longer understand what is coming out of the TV through the headphones. I tried calling my dad in Denver and my mom in Oregon to tell them what happened, and I could not understand a single word they said. The conversations ended up extremely one-sided.
If my hearing doesn’t improve soon, there wouldn’t be much more the ENT doctors can do. I’m already taking the second course of prednisone.
If it doesn’t improve soon, I will never be able to use the telephone again, or listen to music, or attend a movie. My ability to do my job may become significantly affected. If I am no longer able to obtain any usable benefit from the hearing aid in my left ear, then I am left with two options: spend the rest of my life listening to the world through grossly distorted sound, or get a cochlear implant. My sign language skills are primitive, and although I have always planned to become adept with ASL, I’ve never planned on using it as a primary means of communication. The world of sound, limited as it was, is too important to me to leave behind.
Now, as I said before, I’m an audiologist…specifically, a pediatric audiologist, and I work at a hospital that has a cochlear implant program. I know quite a bit about cochlear implants, and the great benefits it can provide to its users. I’ve had a number of audiologists tell me that because of my audiological history and communication skills, I would make a great candidate for a cochlear implant. But I had never considered getting one because I have always obtained great benefit from the hearing aid in my left ear. Cochlear implants really aren’t intended for individuals who can still use hearing aids.
But it looks like I’m heading that way. Despite my knowledge of cochlear implants, I find myself apprehensive at the idea of getting one. I know enough about cochlear implants to know that this apprehension is irrational. I guess what is really bothering me is the idea of losing one ear to conventional amplification permanently, for once you put a cochlear implant in an ear, you can never use a hearing aid in that ear again.
As I write these words, I feel a terrible sense of despair, despite knowing that I still have an option left ahead of me. I’m too depressed to even include the typical language found in a Pit rant. For even if I do get a cochlear implant, it still will not be the same as the amplified sound from a hearing aid. I’m losing something that has always been critically important to me: the remains of my hearing.
Mostly I am just horribly depressed. There are three CD albums next to my computer monitor right now, which I’ve hardly touched in the last two months because of what has been going on with my hearing: Paul Simon’s “Graceland”, Eric Clapton’s “Unplugged”, and the soundtrack to “Amadeus”. I think how I will never be able to hear this music in the same way again, and I just get depressed. I think how I will never be able to hear the voices of my family and friends in the same way again, and I just get depressed. I think I will never hear the voice of my little two-year-old nephew in the way that my brother and sister-in-law hear it and I just get depressed.
