My temporary hiatus from reviews and a PSA.
I don’t normally write public service announcements so bear with me as this isn’t my normal review.
Most who know me, know that I am very serious about protecting my hearing. I have various styles of hearing protection I wear for working with power tools, going to concerts, even airplanes and airports have a set of ear-plugs in my collection for that purpose. I get my hearing tested every 6 months and I have a routine cleaning routine I perform based on my ENT’s recommendations.
And the other morning, I woke up partially deaf. That’s right, I woke up with no hearing on the left side below about 1.5 kHz an odd ringing in that ear and an almost echo chamber like effect for the voices and sounds I could hear on both sides. What’s worse, I was out of town so couldn’t immediately see my doctor. Every time my ear popped on the plane I just knew it was one more nail in the coffin for that ear. Not good.
I’d always heard that hearing loss snuck up on people and was really insidious as the damage occurred slowly enough in many cases that people didn’t realize it was happening. I’d also always heard that hearing loss started at the top end of the auditory spectrum and worked its way downward so I was more than a bit confused at 1.) The fact that I could hear yesterday but not today and 2.) It was the low frequencies that were missing. I figured it could be pressure on the back of the eardrum preventing it from moving freely, that would impact the lows more and explain the sudden onset, yeah, that had to be it.
Once in town, I set the first available appointment with my ENT, they ran a hearing test and confirmed what I suspected in one regard but completely took me by surprise in another. My assessment of what range of hearing I had lost was spot on, my logic for why was not.
What I have is called Sudden Sensoneural Hearing Loss or SSHL and impacts about one in every 5000 people annually for people age 40 to 60. It is less common outside that age group, but not impossible to see in children or the extremely elderly so it pays to know something about it regardless of your age. It has nothing to do with fluid build-up and is instead an issue with the nerve and can result in partial or total deafness literally in the matter of a second. It usually only strikes one ear at any given moment but cases of both ears dropping out at once are not unheard of.
Causes of SSHL vary widely and for most of us, an exact reason for why it happened or the timing of it remains somewhat debatable. It can be triggered by viruses but can also be triggered by a host of other things and there are other conditions like Ménière’s disease that can mimic SSHL and make diagnosis primarily symptom based.
The good news, it is treatable and there is a good chance that at least some recovery is possible if treated quickly. The bad news, the longer between the loss and the treatment the less likely that recovery becomes and treatment is both intense and involved. The treatment is heavy duty steroids both orally and a series of 6 shots (with 3-4 days between each) injected through the ear-drum into the middle ear and allowed to seep into the inner-ear where it can act directly at the nerve.
I’m half way through my 6 shots and any gains thus far have been very small. I’m told that even with intense treatment it can take months to recover fully, or whatever measure of fully one is going to get. (That part scares me). The upside is I do occasionally hear something lower than 1.5 kHz on that side which makes me hopeful, the downside, it’s occasional at best right now and not reliable.
Hopefully, I’m on the mend, but my reason for writing this isn’t to excuse my late reviews or generate sympathy for myself but instead to warn others. If you have sudden hearing loss for any reason, don’t assume its seasonal allergies, a sinus infection, or some other ordinary malady. The sooner steroid treatment is started the more of your hearing you are likely to recover and every day without treatment both reduces the amount of hearing recoverable and the likelihood you will get it back.
Most of us know to protect our hearing with earplugs when in noisy environments, but may not think about partial hearing loss since we experience some degree of it every time we have a head-cold or pollen counts rise beyond a certain level. If you have any doubts, go as soon as possible and make sure seasonal allergy or sinusitis is all that is going on. If it is, you can breathe a sigh of relief, and if it is not, you can begin treatment that much sooner and hope to recover as much as possible.
I’ll keep people posted on my journey, but wanted everyone to protect themselves as my understanding in talking with my ENT is early diagnosis and treatment is critical and far too often doesn’t happen because people believe it will pass on its own, SSHL may self-resolve but your odds improve dramatically with treatment.
Don’t write-off Audiofool.reviews just yet though as I still have a lot of content on tap that was in the pipe before this happened and have every intention of coming back as soon as conditions permit. Lynn will be continuing to add new content too and has done a great job of adding new material since he joined me, so look for more new content soon, even as I take a few days to recover.
Wiljen the Audiofool