I obviously don’t hear as well, since only one ear works. Whenever I walk or talk with people, I always have them stand on my left side, next to my good ear.
The biggest thing is that I can no longer determine where a sound is coming from. When someone calls your name and they are standing behind you to the right, you can tell where they are and turn to the right to greet them. That binaural hearing is actually a very powerful feature. Your brain constructs an aural dome of your surroundings. If you close your eyes and listen, you can pick out a car going by on the street coming from one location, the TV coming from a different direction, the dishwasher going in yet another location, and someone talking to you from a different direction.
So you can be hearing a LOT of different things at once, and your brain can easily pick out one sound to focus on, and can de-emphasize everything else.
Guess what? None of that works without binaural hearing. So if I’m in a noisy environment, I can’t pick anything out. All I hear is all the noise mixed together. The only way I can pick anything out is if it is the loudest sound in the environment. It’s almost impossible for me to have a conversation in a noisy restaurant. I can’t hear what is being said because of all the other noise.
The best situation for me to hear correctly is someone speaking at a normal volume in an otherwise very quiet environment.
Oh yeah, my hearing aids. They’re pretty cool! I’ll leave those for another message.
I resisted the idea of hearing aids for a while. Even though I’m not all that young anymore, I still felt “too young” to need them. Eventually I bit the bullet and let my ENT loan me a pair for a month. Holy Crap! I didn’t know what I was missing. I had some high frequency hearing loss in my good ear and I was very surprised at how much better I heard when that loss was compensated. So I continued on with the process and bought my own pair.
… Yes, “pair” of hearing aids. Why a hearing aid in my deaf ear? I wear what are called Bi-Cross hearing aids. The hearing aid in my deaf ear contains a microphone and a transmitter. The hearing aid in my good ear compensates for my lost frequencies AND acts as a receiver.
Any sound picked up by my bad ear hearing aid gets transmitted via RF to the hearing aid in my good ear. So I can actually hear some of the sound on my bad side. In not-too-noisy environments, this is a big help. In a noisy environment, however, nothing really helps, as I discussed earlier.
Another advantage is the size. I don’t know if they have “in-the-ear” Bi-Cross hearing aids. Mine are behind-the-ear, but are only about 3/4" long with a clear, thin tube that runs into my ear canal. Most people aren’t aware that I’m wearing hearing aids until I tell them, they are that invisible.
Yeah, good question! Stereo (or higher number of channels) is pointless for me. I don’t get any of the directional separation. I do still, on occasion, enjoy listening to music. If I had to quantify it, I’d say that it very slightly decreased my enjoyment of music.
On the other hand, my hearing loss has had a much bigger impact on movies. I LOVE movies, and go to seem them a couple of times a week. I HAVE noticed that my enjoyment of movies has decreased some. One reason is that I miss some of the dialog now. Another is that I have to work a lot harder to hear things, which takes me out of the immersive experience. I often end up cupping my hand behind my good ear to hear dialog better. This has decreased my movie enjoyment some, but I still like going.
No, none of my other senses have compensated. And which ones would, now that I think about it? Sight? That wouldn’t really help. Smell? Taste? Feel? None of those would have any compensatory effect. Actually, the only compensation I can think of would be improved hearing, if you’re blind.
I’m not deaf yet. I can still hear moderately well, all-in-all, with some exceptions (like noisy environments). So I haven’t really gotten involved in “deaf culture”. And so I’m not opinionated about it.
People with “1 ear sudden hearing loss” statistically have a 4% chance of losing the hearing in their other ear. To be honest, this kind of terrifies me. Losing one ear is an inconvenience. Losing both ears is a major life transformation.
Dude what happened to you describes exactly what I’ve been experiencing for exactly one week as of today. Woke up in the morning and my right ear was completely deaf. The spinning and all that other stuff that you describe fits exactly. I live in Germany and here they had me in the hospital for three days on an IV of cortisone. Nothing changed. I went to another Dr., a Prof. Dr. as they are called here and he ordered a CT which came back negative. I felt the same way. Great no tumor? I guess that’s good. But my doc said he didn’t want to get my hopes up about my hearing coming back.
Well what else can I do? Being in noisy environments is very confusing to say the least. I never know where the noises are coming from. I’m also a hobby musician and that makes things worse. I feel likes it’s going to be a long process of adjustment. Though driving my car at high speeds seem to relieve my dizziness. Can’t do that all day though. Oh yeah and since this started I also have tinnitus.
Sorry to hear that you’re experiencing the same thing I did. Initially, I had zero hearing in my bad ear. After a month or two, something worse happened. I got back about 5% of the hearing in that ear. This is even worse than no hearing at all, though. It doesn’t help me to understand sounds and it doesn’t help me locate sounds. Above a certain volume level, I just get a “roaring” noise in the bad ear, making it even harder to interpret the sounds in my good ear. Whenever I go to movies now, I wear a custom molded, high quality ear plug in my bad ear so that I don’t get the roaring noise. When I watch TV, I wear headphones that only puts out sound on one side (my good ear).
My doctor said the same thing as yours: don’t expect to get your hearing back. So far (4 years and counting) she’s been right.
The tinnitus has changed over time. It’s always been loud, about the same volume as someone speaking normally. For the first couple of months, it was just plain weird. I’d hear all kinds of sounds in the bad ear: beeping clicks, clanging sounds like a large bell, and just all manner of things I couldn’t describe. Over time, the tinnitus changed into a pretty constant tone. It’s still loud, but I can mostly ignore it. I still occasionally get beeping clicks, but not too often.
For the first month or two, I could barely even walk, much less drive a car. So I’m going to assume that you were joking with that “driving fast” comment, and leave it at that.
Have you found any positions that you can’t tolerate yet? For me, it was laying on my right side. Any time I’d turn onto my right side, I’d get the spins, even if I was asleep. So pretty soon, my body learned not to turn on my right side, not even when I was asleep. This can be caused by something called Benign Positional Vertigo, or it could be just your body not being used to this position anymore. My doctor checked me for Benign Positional Vertigo and told me that I didn’t have it. (BPV is where the “crystals” in your ears get out of alignment. The doctor can move the crystals back into alignment by moving your head in a certain way.)
But since I didn’t have it, her conclusion was that my body was not acclimated to that position anymore. The only way to fix it was to force your body to become acclimated to it. So for 2 months, 4 times a day I would lay down and turn onto my right side (with 4 repetitions each time). I’d turn onto my right side and let the spins come. One good thing is that the spins are self limiting. They last 30 - 60 seconds, and then get better. After the spins went away, I would continue rolling in that direction until I turned on my right side again, etc. gradually, the spins decreased and eventually went away. But it took a lot of hard work and suffering to fix it.
Just a quick note on tinnitus. It does seem to get worse with hearing loss. I like to describe it as something akin to “phantom limb pain” where the damaged nerves continue to send sensory signals. In the case of tinnitus, the damaged nerves in the ear send signals as if you were hearing annoying sounds.
Hi,
I’m 20 years old and the same exact thing happened to be 5 months ago. I went to sleep one night with normal hearing and woke up the next day with a loud ringing in my right ear. At first I thought it was noise from outside my window until I realized it was all in my head. Immediately I went to see my family doctor (when I really should have gone to the hospital) and got some anti-dizzyness meds and allergy nasal spray (since my doctor thought it was due to allergies). Once I got back home that’s when the spinning and puking started. My experience was SO similar to yours in that I could barely move any part of my body without having the room spin and feeling the need to throw up. It was probably the worst thing I’ve ever been through. The vomiting stopped within 2 days but the dizziness didn’t leave for almost 2 weeks I believe. I was unable to leave my bed and needed help just walking to the bathroom. All the while I lost hearing in my right ear and thought that in time will also get better but never did.
Once I realized the severity of my hearing loss, I saw two ear specialists (one from the Presbyterian Hospital in NY) and they both told me the same thing-it was viral. I had multiple hearing tests done and basically can’t make out words in my right ear while my left ear is perfectly normal. I took steroids, some other medication (I think it starts with a C…?) and even had an injection in my bad ear but nothing worked…my hearing remains the same.
I also have trouble pretty much everywhere I go unless it’s in quiet situations. However, at noisy restaurants or clubs it’s impossible for me to make out what others are saying to me. I always have to make sure to tilt my head so that my good ear is in the direction of who or what I want to hear. I recently made an appointment to get hearing aids and would really appreciate if you could tell me more about the ones you use.
Overall, this would experience has been really hard on me since there is no clear reason as to why this happened. Although I’ve gotten used to it, I still really hope I might get it back one day. I’ve read some situations online where people have gradually got it back years later, although I know chances are slim. I didn’t experience as much vertigo and dizziness as you did after the initial hearing loss and my balance system got back to normal pretty quickly… only in weeks time. I really appreciate you telling your story- I thought I was the only one! And people look at me like I’m crazy when I tell them I randomly lost hearing in my one ear and have no idea why.
Be glad to. The ones I have are made by Phonak. They are called “Bi-Cross” hearing aids. The one in my bad ear actually transmits the sound it hears into the hearing aid in my good ear. This helps me hear people on my bad side a little better, but it doesn’t help with locating the sound.
I got mine about 3 years ago. The hearing aid industry, however, is changing FAST right now. There is a new device out now called a “SoundBite” by Sonitus Medical. It’s a small device that fits in your mouth on your bad side and transmits the sounds by bone conduction to your good ear. There was also one 3 years ago where they mount a post onto your skull on the bad side and a small device mounted to the post again transmits sounds via bone conduction to your good ear.
I recommend you talk to your ENT and ask about all of the options available. I almost got the one with the post mounted to my skull, but that would have been a mistake. The SoundBite, which requires no surgery, now does the same thing. So be aware that the technology is going to keep getting better and don’t do anything drastic.
Assuming I understand your question, perhaps I should have said (in my original post) that I lost, then had to rebuild, my balance system. I’m pretty good in general now. I can do most normal things without any problem. I even did ziplining last month. Spinning in a circle, however, is definitely off the list, as is roller coasters. Ballroom dancing also wouldn’t work any more, due to the spinning. Doing any of these would make me upset for days.
A former colleague had labyrinthitis which causes loss of balance.
I actually woke up last week with no hearing in my left ear (blocked and couldn’t clear it). I think it was a sinus infection so my doctor gave me a short course of antibiotics which cleared it up, but I was worried I’d end up with the loss of balance thing.
Something else I want to comment on here and emphasize so that everyone who reads this knows:
SUDDEN HEARING LOSS IS CONSIDERED A MEDICAL EMERGENCY. If it happens to you, immediately seek medical attention. Don’t leave it for days or weeks hoping it will get better. And if you lose your balance system like I did, you’re going to want to be in the hospital for that. I lost my balance system 16 hours after I lost my hearing and greatly regretted not being in the hospital for that. (I looked in to having an ambulance take me to the hospital, but this was during a Flu scare, and my docs recommended that I stay home, lest I pick up something worse in the hospital.)
Interesting thread - I just came in to mention Dr Oliver Sacks’ fine book, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, which contains a few similar cases IIRC. I highly recommend anyone to read it if you haven’t already.
My cousin had an acoustic neuroma(a benign tumor) on the left side of his brain. It left him totally deaf in that ear. I believe he had some balance problems, but they are resolved now. Still I assume you had multiple CT’S and MRI’s and it would have shown up on one of them.
