The world is a very noisy place..

[tardis454]

I've suffered from hearing loss for almost 20yrs. I've had tinnitus since childhood, but I was always able to hear pretty well up until a bad industrial accident in 2001 put he in the hospital for 6 weeks. 5 surgeries, and a plethora of antibiotics later and... the antibiotics killed my hearing. It took about a year after the surgeries before it became noticeable and went downhill from there. Over the years my hearing has progressively gotten worse. I noticed a lot more ringing, and I was no longer able to properly hear people talk. It sounded like everyone I talked to was mumbling (most of them were)..

Last year wife and I had a big argument about my hearing. She was tired of scream talking to me, and she told me how it was in a not so nice way. That argument hit me pretty hard so I scheduled a hearing test. So far I've lost 37% of my hearing in both ears all at high frequencies. The doctors say it's profound hearing loss and the only way to fix it is with (expensive) hearing aids. It took me a few months to figure out what type of hearing aids to get and where I was going to buy them. I needed high frequency hearings aids with tinnitus masking and a program that filters out background noise. I settled for an online place which will remain unnamed until I can form a proper opinion of the products they offer. I got the hearing aids today, put them in and holy crap I can hear again... I can hear just about everything. I did realize exactly how much I couldn't hear until I got these things. It's going to take some time to adjust to them but I'm glad I finally got them. The best part was when I got to hear our little snowshoe kitty Leeloo meow. She's been with us for 3yrs and she has one of those dainty little kitty meows I was never able to hear. That made my day...

I wanted to share this with you guys because I know guys are stubborn and won't take care of things like this in a timely manner. I'm glad I listened to my wife, but I'm sure I'll regret being able to actually 'hear' her now...

[pdub]

Sue Unit is profoundly hearing impaired and has the fancy aids, so yeah.

I had a boss many years ago who had a unique trait. They could put him inside that soundproof booth and check his hearing but there was no way they could ever figure out how to measure his listening (which was zero).

A coworker of mine came back from the hearing test and said that it wouldn't be nearly as hard if they would only play the sounds louder.

[SuperBuickGuy]

while I don't normally suggest telling your wife "thank you, you were right" often... this might be a time to make an exception.

[Dan Barlow]

My tinnitus seems to be getting louder as well . Glad you found a solution .

[Deaf Bob]

Antibiotics... Not too surprised...STREPTOMYCIN killed mine in the 60's. 18 members of my family far and wide have some form of hearing loss from that "Wonder drug of the century" according to a 1954 Readers Digest article... But hey, glad I'm deaf, my other options are blindness or retardation, altho the jury is syill out on retardation... There is a way to kill all hearing and make you "normal" again.. Cochlear implant at about $90,000.. Streptomycin is used for large animals, not approved for humans..

[STINEY]

That's great news man. My boss went through a similar revelation a couple of years ago, and it was hilarious to me.....is that the printer running? Yes. Does it always make that much noise? Yes. And on and on, it cracked me up, he was like a little kid again at 70. Too many years on a tractor with a straightstack.

And meet our Leeloo. Yep she is a true redhead.

[tardis454]

Here's our Leeloo...




This whole hearing thing is taking some getting used to. The hearing aid place gave me an assortment of ear domes to try but none of them seemed to work properly from the get go. I kept getting screech noises, tons of feedback, or muddied up sounds, tones with not much in between. I tried again today and settled on a pair of ear domes that seem to work pretty good once I got them adjusted properly. I noticed that the noise cancelling feature works well especially while driving. I'll likely have to get ear molds made at some point, but they recommended trying the hearing aids with the domes first.


Bob, I didn't know you 'lost' your hearing. What happened? I'm assuming is was all pharma drug related? How long did it take??

[SuperBuickGuy]

Bob, I didn't know you 'lost' your hearing. What happened? I'm assuming is was all pharma drug related? How long did it take??

The "Deaf" part in Deaf Bob didn't give it away?

Wait until you find out his other secret..... that he's Santa Claus. It does make sense because that fat bastard never brought me what I wanted

[tardis454]

The "Deaf" part in Deaf Bob didn't give it away?

Wait until you find out his other secret..... that he's Santa Claus. It does make sense because that fat bastard never brought me what I wanted

Yeah I know Deaf Bob is Deaf.. I didn't know that he wasn't "Deaf" from day 1, meaning, he was able to hear at some point in his life.

[DanStokes]

I have tinnitus from playing Rock n Roll on stage (and in practice). Wish I could blame it on work but they were serious about wearing PPE in the test cells and a lack of headphones was pretty obvious. Also reduced hearing of some high frequencies. I went to a local doc and did the hearing tests and they said there wasn't much they could do for me at this point. Mine isn't too bad and I can't imagine NOT hearing that high-pitched ringing. Great that you are getting some relief!

Dan

[Deaf Bob]

4.5 yrs old.. Strep throat.. Thus my speech was "established". And I read alot! Did not really interact with "hearies" much until my 30's-40's. Remember telling a mean woman on the phone to tell me and I'll tell my mommy.. She was nasty. Grandma came in at that time and hand on hip, chewed that woman out.. 2 best buds who are exceptional at starting anything helped me figure how to fix stuff. To me a blown header gasket sounded like a knock.. Have a buddy I grew up with that got the cochlear implant, said he can hear dog's nails on the wood floor.

[DanStokes]

Have a buddy I grew up with that got the cochlear implant, said he can hear dog's nails on the wood floor.

That's why we still have wall to wall carpet in most of the house. ME thought she wanted hardwood but I took her over to our neighbor's house with hardwood - they had dogs, too. The click of the nails on the floor drove her nuts (as I thought it would). Being married to a musician I know how attuned to sound she is.

Dan

[squirrel]

It's neat that you've found a solution to the problem.

Mine isn't bad enough yet that I'm going to do anything about it. I an ignore the tinnitus most of the time, and the only real annoyance is that my wife forgets that I can't hear her from the other room like I should be able to, and stills try to tell me stuff when she's out of my hearing range.

I guess this profile (phone app hearing test) is kind of normal for someone approaching 60, who likes to play with loud things on occasion:

[tardis454]

I can ignore the tinnitus most of the time..

I ignore the tinnitus too, not much else I can do, it's not going away anytime soon..

...the only real annoyance is that my wife forgets that I can't hear her from the other room like I should be able to, and stills try to tell me stuff when she's out of my hearing range.

My wife does this constantly, she'll walk away and talk, turn her head and talk, talk from other rooms..
Then she gets mad and tells me she's tired of repeating herself, she's not going to repeat herself etc..

[RockJustRock]

As a child I had an Autistic condition that caused anxiety because of sustained loud noise due to the confusion of not hearing everything else. Then covering my ears just made it WORSE. And of course nobody understood what was going on. As I grew I learned to cope with and even crave noise. It was still unsettling but like a horror movie. Thus drag racing, hifi and live music work. I still have the condition but because I cope with much of it nobody gives a crap. Asperger's sucks most of the time, but it is what it is. Most recently I was sitting at the exit or the hairpin at the Grand Prix and got disgusted and had to move when the non-turbo cars ran. Later I realized it was all that noise but no fire or smoke and they weren't even going that fast compared to a drag race. Took me a while to realize that though. At the moment it was just suddenly the feeling "This sucks, gotta go.".

My hearing aid story is while I was in the VA hospital they would take away the old guy's hearing aids for "safety" reasons then they would yell instead of talking. And the doctors and nurses couldn't understand THAT bit either. I'd be yelling "Give him back his hearing aid!" because EVERYONE was yelling and it was pissing me off.