Otosclerosis

I wish I could be of help!

The word Otosclerosis caught my eye; I was diagnosed with it in the early 1970s; my father had it, his mother had it. Between us we’ve spent enough on hearing aids to cancel the national debt.

A word of caution. If a doctor proposes surgery, push for answers and percentages - always keeping in mind that the disease is degenerative and even if a new stainless steel stapes restores your hearing right after surgery, it will continue to be sclerosed and immobilized over time. Trying hard to be clear and objective here, and failing miserably; just be careful!

Batteries and tubing a cheap compared to hurt feelings of people you care about but cannot understand, and who can’t or won’t adjust their speech (speed, cadence, volume, precision) to provide you sufficient signal for you to assemble into intelligible speech. Be gentle with yourself, and with those who refuse to accommodate to your hearing deficit, or accuse you of ‘selective hearing’.

You may wish to treat communication as a game… there are blank spots (consonants, vowels, whole words) in what you pick up. If you interpolate enough to make sense of it, you won that round! If you guess wrong, find the humor in the difference between what was said and what you heard; laugh, and go on.

Also - large grain of salt - I’m (was) an Engineer, not a Doctor, so my 40-50 year-old information about middle ear surgery may be too out-of-date to be relevant.

Best of luck! The people here can be very supportive, check back and make friends.

@BoCat said:

The word Otosclerosis caught my eye; I was diagnosed with it in the early 1970s

Same here, but in the 1990s. I had a stapedectomy in my right ear in 2000, and it didn’t go as well as I had hoped. I’ve been wearing hearing aids (Oticon Intents now) for quite some time, and I would never consider having surgery on my left ear. All in all, I think hearing aids are a much better option nowadays once you get past the stigma and get used to them.

@e1405 said:

All in all, I think hearing aids are a much better option nowadays once you get past the stigma and get used to them.

Agreed. And I don’t feel any stigma about wearing a hearing aid, it informs people I’m HOH, gives a heads up to speak clearly. If they treat me like sh*t I don’t waste my time on them.

Had stepedectomy right ear around 1976, great result. Left ear a year later, good result for months or maybe longer but then left went flat dead, and according to the doc, the prosthesis must have slipped and stabbed the cochlea - not repairable.

Meantime, right ear declined, obvious in my audiogram - and I cannot recall anyone ever telling me the disease would overtake the improvement the surgery made (but maybe they did warn me and I just don’t remember).

Surgery is potentially wonderful, but it is also burning bridges. Current hearing aid dispenser is after me to get cochlear implant in right ear to replace hearing aid. Talk about rolling the dice! No thanks! If they wanted to cut on the dead left ear I might go for it (risk of facial paralysis if the doc gets clumsy) but no hearing on that side to lose.

So - trying to give Karen5 some support, along with emphasizing that there are no quick fixes.