Holy crap I am going deaf -- weirdly

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I am 42 years old. Long story short: ear infection, ruptured eardrum, 50%+ hearing loss left ear, assured temporary, fluid still behind eardrum, Eust. tubes swollen. Test indicates possible nerve damage as well; given antibiotics and high-dose steroids to reduce the swelling, then will retest for the nerve damage. Now end of Day 2 of steroids.

My car beeps when you start it, like most cars. Tonight the beep sounds weird - buzzy, I guess. I figure the car’s getting old.

At the restaurant, Sinatra on the stereo sounds a little buzzy, and a little flat as well – just off. Oh well. He’s not the greatest singer in the land, although I love his music.

But at home, the cats meowed at me. This rocked me back on my heels – I am not imagining this. Each of them sounded like two cats. It was so distinct that I would have instantly thought their vocal cords were damaged, but it was both of them. They are each meowing somehow in stereo, I realize. More than buzzy; two distinct audio tracks it sounds like.

Test with alarm clock beep, each ear. Left ear is hearing about an 1/8 tone flat.

I am a musician. Piano sounds horrible. Music through headphones is totally unlistenable.

Holy fucking shit.

2

I’m sorry this has happened. I’m don’t know what to say, but sorry.

3

Man, that’s rough. Hopefully it’s temporary, just a side effect of the swelling and fluid in your ear. How long until they can find out if there’s permanent damage?

4

As a musician it must be doubly frustrating! Here’s hoping for excellent news on the nerve damage front…

5

I can’t figure out if it’s the initial swelling causing the pitch distortion, or the Predinsone. I didn’t notice the distortion until the ear finally popped open yesterday. I’m reading hearing-loss messageboards, and I have a bad feeling that this could be permanent. No way to know yet, though.

Because it’s Independence Day there’s not an audiology department in the country that’s open. I’m going to have to wait till Monday to see anybody.

All formerly clear sounds now have a buzz. I’ve been watching TV and it’s interesting - voices which are naturally clear and melodic sound terrible, but whispering or husky voices sound fine.

I have a tuning fork which I keep testing with. In my panic last night I was wrong; the left ear is sharp, not flat. But it’s increasing, up to almost a half-tone sharp. (In other words, the tuning fork is an A in my right ear, but fully half-way up to a B-flat in the left.) I have read that this kind of distortion sometimes progresses to OCTAVES. I can’t imagine what that would be like.

But - and maybe this is good news - when I apply the tuning fork directly to my skull, no pitch distortion. That suggests to me maybe it’s not the nerve, but the inner ear mechanism.

6

I used to work for an indie record label. Toward the end of mixing an album, our primary recording engineer suffered two ruptured eardrums from an ear infection. He did fully recover and his ears have lost nothing as far as dynamic frequency response.

We had to push back the mastering date for the album, but he was able to complete it. His hearing did return to normal with no long-term effects.

Edit: He was also back mixing the album much sooner than I expected.

7

This is a somewhat ludicrous idea, I know, but if it does turn out beyond a shadow of a doubt to be permanent damage, is there some way you could go intentionally completely deaf in the offending ear? I know it would suck mightily to only be able to hear in one ear, but maybe, as a musician, it would be preferable to not being able to stand to play or listen to music at all?

In any case, you have my sympathy, and I hope your hearing recovers completely and makes the above suggestion entirely moot.

8

Or, if you could get an ear plug that blocked out all noise from entering your bad ear (if such a thing is even possible and would work), you could just go half-“deaf” at will instead.

9

That kind of technology does exist. You can get ear monitors molded to the shape of your ear. They are used by musicians on stage so they can hear a mix of themselves playing, but not all the other noise/volume coming from the stage, speakers, and the crowd. I used to know a bass player who emphatically recommended them because he lost some hearing in one ear from standing beside the drum kit. next to he crash. The molded ear piece block out a substantial amount of sound.

However, the OP really should be more optimistic. The majority of perforated eardrum heal just fine on their own and only rarely result in permanent hearing loss. They usually heal in a couple weeks, or if he’s unlucky a couple months. For larger tears, in some cases, surgical intervention is required and a thin membrane is used as a patch to help the eardrum heal. They considered this for our recording engineer, but then determined his case really was no big deal, after all.

If it’s stubborn there is a surgical procedure that uses tissue graphs to rebuild the ear drum.

Masonite - do rememer that the hearing-loss message boards you’re reading are going to be skewed. Those boards are likely to have a disproportionate number of people with permanent hearing loss represented among posters. Our engineer, Jim, certainly never would have been on those boards. All the people whose ears healed just fine and are hearing great… they aren’t on those boards!

10

Obviously it will be a state of shock and an ultimate feeling of doom when your hearing changes… the same goes with sight and smell and the remaining senses. I have had a reoccuring infection in a particular eye… and no matter how often it occurs… each time my mind goes straight to the ‘may cause blindless’ on the diagnostic list (unfortunately nothing that exciting in my life happens… and my sight always comes back…:: sigh:: )

…But like Eats_Crayons mentions… there are a lot of really great medical options out there. I would not get on the worrisome/devastated bandwagon too quickly. Scary… but have patience.
And I know I would do the same thing… jumping on any board that may give any insight on whats going on/what may happen… but I also agreed that they are going to be extremely skewed… who likes to write about amazing recoveries/results… honestly? ha… kidding. Best of luck to you. Don’t lose hope too quickly though.

11

I thought of this. But of course that’s too drastic, and unsafe - you don’t want to eliminate even poor hearing in one ear, because both ears’ input helps you place the direction of sound. I’ve been experiencing this with the left ear plugged up; can’t tell who’s calling me.

Aside from that, if you cut the auditory nerve, you’re not free of perceiving sound. Your brain may supply something on its own, given no input. This could be loud white noise or a ringing tinnitus, apparently. It’s a bad idea (but thanks!)

As for the earplug, absolutely. I think I will be relying on plugging up the left ear at work, or else everyone I talk to will give me the screaming meemies. All high-voiced people sound just like those ghost demon twin girls in The Shining: “Come play with us!”

Thanks, Crayons, for pointing out the skew at hearing loss messageboards.

Tomorrow I call the ENT and report. I am hoping she tells me “Oh yeah, happens all the time, see you Thursday.”

12

I had something like this after having an ear infection. Any music I heard sounded distorted, like it was coming from a torn speaker. Higher pitched voices were very distorted. I went to an ENT and he removed (scraped, very painfully) what he told me was a scab from my eardrum. Things fortunately went slowly back to normal after that. Good Luck.

13

Update:

No change in the condition, which I’ve learned is called diplacusis, or specifically in my case, binaural disharmonic diplacusis. This just means pitches are perceived differently in one ear vs. the other; there are various causes but it seems to be mostly in the cochlea. Not too much literature online, but I’ve read of several cases where it went away, after a short or long time. I also read an abstract of a professional musician who intentionally destroyed his cochlea to kill the effect - the supergoose solution I’ll call it, but I’m nowhere near there yet.

I had a major breakthrough last night, in which I was able to listen to all kinds of music for hours. It sounded, for the most part, in tune. I almost cried with relief. Since self-tests with the tuning fork stay the same, I think it’s actually the brain compensating, ignoring the “bad” cochlear input, tuning it out, or even correctly tuning it in. Pitch perception is a psychological phenomenon. My brain may “remember” exactly what A-440 sounds like, and learn to substitute that tone for what I’m hearing in my left ear, and compensate all the way up and down the scale.

Has anybody heard of that psych/optics experiment where they give people glasses with reflectors that make them see the whole world upside-down? They wear them around for a while, and after like two days, the brain flips the image right-side up again. (Then when they take the glasses off, it’s flipped once more and their brains have to compensate again.) For that matter, the image projected on the retina is upside-down itself, due to the properties of the lens, and the brain flips it just fine, for everybody.

Who knows - but somehow I was able to enjoy nearly all of my favorites. Still problematic are high voices and higher-register piano, which still sounds honky-tonk; in fact all of the higher register sounds a bit tinny. But I don’t care. I learned this pleasure is not closed off to me, and I’m so happy about that. I really believe I can re-learn how to listen to music, and maybe even pure tones someday (the damn cats’ voices are the very worst. 2 cats sound like an SATB chorus.)

But the ENT/audiologist visit today was a huge bummer. Basically, they didn’t believe me, or never heard of it, or generally downplayed my condition as common, post ear infection. They acted like they had no idea what I was talking about; just characterized it within a common range of post-infection symptoms, told me to come back later if it was still bothering me.

Maybe it is quite common, and only musicians can really “hear” it and describe it specifically. I’m one of those people who goes around listening to tones all day – the alarm clock, the toothbrush motor, the car starter beeps, the security badge at the office door, computer warning beeps, the dial tone, the fax tone, the adding machine (God, what a life I do live) – and I know what all of these pitches are intimately. They are a part of the tonal landscape I live in. The slightest diminishment of this experience is a big loss to me, but I’m weird that way. Just happy that I begin to see how to cope with it.

As I have a name for it, my next step (if the condition doesn’t completely resolve on its own) is to visit the university medical library. Also, to search for an ENT who works with musicians. Somebody’s got to have heard of this.

For now, I feel like those people who hear radio stations through their fillings.

14

Just curious if this has improved for you since your last post.

The first time I experienced disharmonic diplacusis was maybe ten years ago. I was listening to Glenn Gould play Bach, and suddenly it sounded like he was playing through a ring modulator. Very confusing and disorienting. I am an experimental/electro-acoustic music composer and producer, so listen to a lot of weird music. So it took me a minute to realize, “Wait, this is Bach! Not supposed to sound weird!”

Since then I have experienced this randomly, maybe once or twice per year. Episodes are not related to any kind of illness or ear damage. Everything is fine and then suddenly one ear is a half step off from the other one. It typically lasts for an hour or two, then goes away. I no longer freak out about it, just wait for it to fade out.

I am 50 years old, have spent a lot of my life listening very closely to all manner of music, sounds, and noises. FWIW, I recently had my first hearing test ever, and the audiologist said my hearing was as close to perfect as he’d ever seen. I asked him about the diplacusis and he was very interested, but had never heard of it or encountered anyone who had it. Crazy.

Anyway, I hope you are feeling better.

15

We usually open new threads rather than resurrecting the old ones, nonseq. If you’d like to PM the OP, perhaps he’ll start an update thread if he has anything new to offer regarding his condition.

I’m closing this thread, then.

Ellen Cherry
MPSIMS Moderator