In late March this year I noticed a difference in my hearing while visiting with high school friends who were visiting Florida. I thought it was the acoustics of the patio we were sitting in; everything said around the table came to me as an echo to my right ear. The next day when answering a call on my cell phone I discovered that it wasn’t the patio, but the hearing in my left ear – it had suddenly gone from salvageable with the help of a hearing aid to kaput all at once. My tinnitus also changed from ringing and high-pitched tones to that of bubbling water and occasionally as a windstorm. I am not writing this story for sympathy, but rather to inform and educate those of you whom might experience the same thing in the future. The process in finding out what might have caused it, and then how to fix it, if possible, took three-and-a-half months of visits and treatments – all to no avail on healing the “most likely cause” of the loss (an MRI eliminated possibility of a tumor, so the most likely cause was determined to be an infection of the inner ear). One slight consolation is that I received new hearing-aids from the VA – the “cross-over” hearing aid wherein the left ear houses a microphone to receive the sound from that quadrant, which is then wirelessly sent to the receiver in the right ear to make it possible to better discern sound from that direction. It also has Bluetooth, so I can pair it to my phone, iPad, and the like. The new hearing aids help somewhat, but I still have difficulty with sounds coming in from my port-side.
One thing to remember is that this condition is not all that uncommon – it seems about a third of the people I’ve mentioned this to have either personally experienced it, or have knowledge of someone who has the same issue. The main thing to know, and remember, is that if you experience “sudden” loss of hearing, the best chance of retrieving it is to commence treatments with a specialist within three days of your first indication. The success rate for recovery declines to nearly zero if treatment is delayed beyond the three to four-week point. The VA and major health providers should treat this as an emergency situation if you use the term “sudden” versus “gradual” degradation of your hearing. I did use that terminology, with both the VA and the Mayo Clinic, but the schedulers were apparently unaware (as was I) and got me the first available hearing test, which was four weeks out. I received the treatment anyway, but it was unsuccessful. When I learned the importance of the timeliness of treatment I asked why, if it was so important, was I not moved to the head of the line. Mayo and the VA said I should have been, and that it had been marked as a “red flag” error in their systems. Had I only known – had I only listened to my wife! She told me from the onset that I should have called back and insist on being seen ASAP. But, alas, I didn’t.
Take this as one of those “It is best to learn from the mistakes of others” lessons.