Wednesday, April 05, 2006
Had an appointment late this morning to test my hearing. It turns out that the hearing my right ear is normal for my age, and I have been diagnosed as having mild hearing loss in my left year.
"Mild" is very much a relative term, and while there is a notable difference in my hearing in that ear, the deafness is not complete. Mainly the high-end seems to have been affected, and I have been noticing the effects ever since I had an ear infection near the end of last year. I find myself more often asking people to speak up, finding it harder to locate the direction a sound is coming from, and picking out a conversation in a noisy environment.
The appointment was a two-stage affair, where I went in for an initial set of tests by an audiologist in a hearing lab, and then taking those results over to the ear, nose and throat specialist for interpretation and diagnosis. There was an initial test that basically did some echo-location on each ear to ensure that no fluid remained inside it, and then a battery of tests where I had to react when I heard a sound. The worst part of the latter test was the long pauses when I knew sounds must have been sent, but I couldn't hear them.
The doctor's diagnosis was that the actual auditory nerve in my left ear has been damaged by original infection. While the deafness is "mild" in some ways this was the worst possible outcome, as there is likely no remedy for the problem itself. My option with the tinnitus is to take a drug which is known to cause drowsiness as a side-effect. Decided to just live with the constant ringing in the ear. The doctor said that it often diminishes after about a year. Ugh.
As a follow-up to confirm the diagnosis, I will be going in for an MRI, which will take place in a couple of month's time, which will then be followed up by another appointment at the audiology lab to see if there's been any change in that ear.
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