At least I hope it’s temporary. Last week I developed acute inner ear infections. I’m being treated by doctors, but I’ll leave out those details and just talk about what I’m experiencing while being significantly deaf for the first time. It’s very odd. I can hear about half of my normal in my right ear, and not much at all in the left ear. I also have major tinnitus in both ears. So can’t hear the important stuff, but at the same time I have constant alarm bells shrieking in my head. Nasty irony.
It’s very weird to turn around and find that my husband or dogs have come into the room and I didn’t hear them approach. Hubby has to touch me or yell to wake me up in the mornings. Watching tv is a problem because while I can turn it up loud enough to hear, it still sounds muddled. I can hear lots of bumps and thumps but can’t immediately identify what causes the sounds. Mostly I hear vibrations in the floor, like when the dogs go pounding up or down stairs, but I can’t hear the dogs whining at me. When I try to talk to someone, I can’t tell if I’m talking too softly or too loud. I hear myself in my own head just fine from the vibration between my throat and ears, but apparently you need the sound waves coming into your ears to fine-tune your volume.
In general it makes me feel kind of isolated, like I’m wrapped in an invisible barrier.
Also something not specific to this, but have noticed it with other serious illnesses I’ve had before: it’s not comforting that it takes weeks to get in to see a specialist, when the primary times you need to get into a specialist are when serious things are going on. Like now, I may need to get my ears lanced if they don’t clear themselves in a couple days, but the soonest the ENT could fit me in is two weeks. What kind of permanent damage am I risking by letting acute ear infection simmer for weeks? Just a comment that our medical care system worries me…
More thoughts later as they come to me, probably around learning to cope with being deaf while being productive at work.
Losing your hearing is a frightening thing to experience. I had significant ear wax build up once, which almost completely blocked the hearing in one ear. I had no idea the cause until I saw my doctor. Being unable to hear what others are saying to you is a significant handicap, one that I hadn’t fully appreciated until I went through the experience.
When the doctor cleared out my ear canals, it felt like a miracle.
It’s slightly disturbing when I realize people have walked into and out of the room I’m in without my awareness. (For example, hubby just walked out and I didn’t realize he’d ever came in or when he came in.) It also seems to cause sort of an odd time dilation. It’s like because I can’t hear things, my sense of time passing is skewed. On saturday, hubby left at 10am for an 11am appointment and I knew he was going to get groceries after his appointment. I was really surprised when he texted me as he was checking out, it felt only a few minutes after he left, but the clock said it was after 3pm.
I’m never sure if I’m being too loud or obnoxious or nasty. If I burp I can’t tell if it’s a loud belch or a little rumble. I can’t tell if I’m eating noisily. I can’t tell if I’m pounding noisily on my keyboard. I can’t tell if I let out a little silent fart or a gross one that hubby can hear. I can’t tell if I snore at night.
You don’t realize how much you moderate your behavior by sound subconsciously until you lose your hearing!
First day in the office with this situation, it’s going okay but feels very odd. The lady in the cube across from mine, about ten feet away tried to ask me how I was, and had to call my name to get my attention. I had to actually walk the ten feet over to her to hear her. So my hearing distance talking to people seems to be about 4 feet or so. Not good.
It seems like my hearing goes up and down somewhat randomly, but slightly better in the middle of the day, slightly worse in the morning and late evenings. The left ear cracked and popped a little yesterday afternoon, does that mean it might be starting to clear out? I didn’t feel any improvement in my hearing when it happened. I’m wondering if I’m having permanent nerve damage in my inner ears because of this.
Has anybody else here experienced this issue (hearing loss due to inner ear infection, not just from wax buildup)? Did your hearing come back? Is there any therapy I could do to help it along? Or should I just start getting prices on hearing aids…
