Struggling with sudden hearing loss post Covid. help!
8 months post covid my hearing started to rank rapidly. tinnitus, but also i have trouble hearing women’s voices and or soft voices. GP sent me for hearing test and i qualify for hearing aid 60 years old. my results were not the normal pattern of age related or normal hearing loss. also it seems to be getting worse quickly. zero family history and i’m terrified i’m going to lose it. i read about sudden onset hearing loss and low and behold there are ppl experiencing this from covid infections. sadly the treatments (steroids etc) seem to be effective if given promptly and aggressively. has anyone experienced this, and is it possible to still save anything. i’m really scared and my health care though saying something. is different going on here, just shrug and want me to get hearing aids. thank you anyone…
Parent Replies
Sorry that you are dealing with hearing loss.
My ears went bad in college due to otosclerosis, so our situations do not compare very much.
There are all sorts of reasons for hearing loss and frequency profiles.
The good news is that we are in the Bay Area, where there are lots of good doctors and audiologists.
I see ENT Dr. Christine Kim at Stanford Emeryville and get my hearing aids at Hearing Science of Walnut Creek.
Some people say that Costco is a good hearing aid dispenser, but my loss is so weird that I just stick with the name-brand audiology people.
Hi, had the same issue 30 years ago (unrelated to COVID). Steroids not given in time so I lost 100% of hearing in one ear. Unilateral hearing loss has its difficulties and I know how devastating it is to learn this initially, but you adapt (and I rarely think about my hearing loss other than a few small adjustments in my life). THere is a somewhat difficult period initially while your brain adapts to the new input (or lack thereof!). Hearing aids (assuming your other ear is fine) are pretty much useless for unilateral loss, but that of course depends on your degree of loss. Mine is 100%. I'm happy to talk to you one on one to tell you more about my experience if that would help. Please contact me directly.
Is the hearing loss in one ear, or both?
I had sudden hearing loss, and they never did figure out what caused it. I just woke up one day with severe vertigo and once they treated that, I realized I couldn't hear on one side. They did give me steroids (but the ENT also said it was a toss-up whether those really did much). They did an MRI of my head just to be sure there wasn't an obvious cause, like a growth or tumor or anything. My hearing loss dips just into the severe loss range, and I have a hearing aid. I think I should have gone for a crossover device, though, because I think my loss is just too severe for a normal hearing aid to be able to compensate.
If you've just seen a GP and the hearing test people, you might want to insist on seeing an ENT doctor (or Head & Neck, they are called now, I think).