Sudden Hearing Loss is Life Altering and Real
Here’s my experience.
Friday
My elder son left for College on January 1 last year. I was sad to see him leave — a chapter of my life was ending. I was very happy for him — life in a new country, learning from the best professors.
Saturday
I teach content writing at a local college. I finished the remote, pandemic-era Zoom session the next day and headed downstairs to catch some TV. I turned the TV on and a blast of sound hit my right ear. It felt strange and disorienting. I quickly turned the sound down, and settled in to watch a show. The sounds were broken and I felt a buzzing in my right ear. I thought it was blocked — it was very cold at the airport the previous night when I’d gone to see my son off.
Sunday
The next day I woke up to see the ceiling spin. I threw up. It was hard climbing down the stairs. The buzzing in my ear had grown to a roar. I knew something was off. It was a Sunday, so I set up a telemedicine call with an ENT at my local hospital. He heard me out patiently, and made a tentative diagnosis of labyrinthitis. He asked me to come in the next day.
Monday
They performed an audiometry test on me at the hospital on Monday. The results were startling to say the least. I had no hearing in my right ear. “What did you do to your ear, Ma’am?”, the audiologist exclaimed. The ENT team stuck to their diagnosis of Labyrinthitis (although the junior-most member of the team remarked that the tinnitus was ‘the song of the dying nerve’) and sent me home with oral steroids.
A Month Later
When I met a third ENT that I learned that I had experienced an ‘otological emergency’. I was told that If I had got IV steroids within 48 hours of the incident, I could probably have retrieved 80% of my hearing back.
As it happens I’m left with about 80% hearing loss in my right ear. I went through 2 weeks of oral steroids after that first hospital visit. I went to two other ENTs for a second opinion, both of whom felt I needed intra-tympanic injections asap. I went back to the hospital and insisted on getting intra-tympanic injections. But they didn’t help much.
A Year Later
I use a Phonak hearing aid now. It helps me when the ambient noise is low, but is pretty useless in noisy situations. I give idiotic responses and half-grins at parties when people speak to me at my right. The roar of tinnitus has settled into a high-pitched squeal that my brain ignores most of the time. If I sleep on my side with my ‘good’ ear into the pillow, I’m pretty much dead to the world. I’ve lost the ability to ‘spatially’ locate sounds — if my phone rings, I do a 360 to see where it is.
I feel angry sometimes, but have mostly accepted what happened.
I don’t think many people can appreciate how life altering this has been. “Half deaf” is a significant hearing impairment.
I do live in hope. Researchers around the world are probing how to heal SSHL — Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss. This is what I experienced. My second son, a Biology enthusiast, assures me a cure is likely within the decade. I’m researching bone conduction headphones. I belong to a SSHL support group — most people who stumble into it are dazed and confused, searching for answers from a recent diagnosis.
I’m writing this to give information to anyone else who’s looking for answers. If you came here after searching for ‘sudden hearing loss’, ‘blocked ear no hearing’, ‘buzz in ear’ or other similar keywords, you may have SSHL. Please go see an ENT asap. Go to more than one. Ask about SSHL. Get help fast. SSHL is life altering and real, but may be partly reversible when treated in time.