Sudden hearing loss (low frequencies plus tinnitus and some hyperacusis)

Thanks for answering:

When I hear from my good right ear it seems to elicits distortion or feedback on my left ear. I can also sit at the piano and all notes sound distorted. They are less distorted if I block the bad ear, There is no fidelity in music and the sound has static. I wonder if it would be best not to hear a thing form my left and call it a day.

I will say the distortion is a bit variable during the day and it has only been a week since the incident. I wonder if compression may help. It is supposed to attenuate the loud pitches and bring up the soft pitches. In theory this should cause less distortion.

In your opinion: It is worse it to amplify the ear with distortion? Did the hearing aid give you more or less distortion? Did they use compression?
I know I can adapt, but I love to listen to music. I even record music on the computer so this is a bummer.

Thanks for the encouraging words!

I really do not notice it when I listen to music.
Like I said if I use both ears with my aids in I really do not notice it per se.
Whether I have my aids in are not I hear it from my left side when someone speaks to me on that side. Can’t miss it.
I tried to use only my right side for a couple of days.
Two problems.
Left ear has very loud tinnitus. It’s hard to go all day with my ear screaming at me.
Also discovered that without my left aid I do not hear as well. I need them both.
Like I said before if you use an aid you will amplify the distortion.
The question is do you need the aids to hear.
I can hear without my aids unlike a lot of other people on the forum.
The problem is I say what and huh a lot without them.
I am not a musician.
I am not an audiophile.
When i listen to the radio are stream music the distortion does not jump out at me.
I quess it all depends on your loss.
You are not alone there are a lot of people on this forum who have distortion.
They wear aids.
Most audiologist have some type of trial period.
Costco is a favorite on this forum.
You can always try them and bring them back before the trial period ends.
Most important part of getting aids. The audiologist.
Do research. Find the best in your area.
Aids can be expensive depending on what you want.
That’s why a lot of people try Costco.
Personally I think I’d see an ENT first. See what they say then proceed from there.

I’m sorry. This sounds like an awful trauma. It is only natural that you are grieving. Imagine any other sort of sudden, unexpected, significant loss–you wouldn’t be over it in just 3 weeks. In some ways, this is more difficult because it will be hard for many of the people around you to understand it, which is lonely. Be kind to yourself. Medication can be a useful tool, and be kind to yourself about that, too. Don’t rule out grief counselling. For some reason, people can be oddly dismissive of even their own sudden hearing loss–like, I’m still walking and talking and without physical pain so it can’t be that bad. Give yourself permission to manage it the way you would any other kind of loss.

I’m curious, are there still types of music that sound interesting to you through this weird new filter? For some reason I thought of the prepared piano, if you already know it, where people do weird things to a piano to make it sound different and then explore how they can still make music with it. Or, sometimes the beauty in poetry is in how it is restricted and built within a certain shape. Maybe it’s too soon.

This is still very recent. I would expect the tinnitus and the loudness tolerance issues to improve with time, although tinnitus improvement is always much slower than anyone would like. There may not be improvement in the hearing loss. I don’t think it’s out of the question that some of the distortion might improve over a longer timeframe, if perhaps not all of it. Asymmetrical hearing will always make hearing speech in noise more challenging.

I wonder whether training would give you more improvement. Like rehabing an injured limb. There’s some very minor evidence suggesting that early amplification after a sudden loss can lead to better hearing outcomes.

Thanks for your kind response. I had the first intratympanic injection yesterday and feel no difference. In any event today I had a good day at work and was not stressed. Then I come home, night falls, and I get depressed. In my quest to ameliorate the depression I try to find ways to listen to music and if I hear more distortion all I do is get more depressed and anxious.

IN any event today I discovered that the distortion and buzzing in the left ear was less bothersome when talking to others. At times I was a bit unaware of the distortion. I assume I will get used to it. However, music is much more complex and difficult to accept when it is distorted. I can play the guitar softly and it seems OK, but if I hit a bass note too hard it causes distortion. I have a surround sound system on my TV that I cannot enjoy. The TV now sounds better a low volume and I have to use Apple Airpods pro as hearing aids. The wind and road noise while driving is awful. I try plugin my left ear, put somehow sound gets through.

Once I am done with ENT I guess I will work with an audiologist to find a good hearing aid system. I use to record music in a Digital Audio so I know quite a bit about sound frequency, equalization, and compression. Hopefully i can buy a hearing aid that i can tweak with an app on the iphone.

Thanks for listening to my rant!

I thought I would post an update. I seem to be adapting to the distortion in the left ear. I can listen to music while driving if I pan the sound to the right side speakers. I played some guitar OK even if the low tones were a bit distorted. I am less depressed an anxious. I hope I do not have a setback. My family has been very supportive. But the question remains the same: What is the point of amplifying sound to a cochlea that produces distortion? That is a self taken audiogram with an an Apple app.

@jay658 said:

From my understanding meds like Sertraline take away the lows but also blunt the highs. Are you still on Sertraline?

Sertraline is antidepressant / anti-anxiety drug, zoloft is the common brand name (I couldn’t remember earlier).
Oh, you meant lows and highs in mood, not in sound frequency? I started writing ‘but that’s not drug for hearing loss’ then it hit me

I didn’t notice significant cut of the good mood, quite the opposite. But it might be related with fun stuff that cats do and I keep laughing at them and smiling at them all the time. Especially noticeable in last half a year (my mood increase) Didn’t have cats at the moment of starting with the pills. Yes, I’m still on them and plan to do so for quite a long time.
Reducing anxiety from loud noises alone is worth taking it for long. Being introvert, on autistic spectrum (asperger), HoH with annoyance with noise (to the point that I will refuse any job offer which has open offices, that was before hearing loss, now it’s not negotiable, and no, ear plugs don’t work for people talking ;( ), sertraline just gives my nerves a few more inches to be able to be less stressed…

Anyhow, I’d strongly suggest ditching xanax immediately and seeking something more useful and not from benzodiazepine family.

About noise. When I lost hearing overnight, and ended in hospital, I was almost yelling at nurses to stop yelling at me since it’s ear tearing from how squeaky it was. Yeah, it was weird ‘I lost my hearing, don’t shout at me’
Them walking on corridors was the worst, like it was stumping on my brain directly.
I was actually enjoying silence whenever I could. Even liked earplugs for many situations
So yeah, I definitely can relate.
About a year later (and two listening therapies done) I decided for aid because I finally noticed how/what I don’t hear. Audiogram was unchanged, but my brain got less excitement.
I was asked if I wear aids, but wasn’t suggested ones until year after the loss.
However, therapy was several weeks long each time, and was really intensive and hard, and I was told that doing it 2-3 times a year could maintain brain working, so I guess it did work for me for a while. Then I added aids to have training all the time.
What I wasn’t told/offered is that I should do direct streaming and not ‘just wear aids’.

I wonder if if they’d be fitted properly back then, and I did stream (actually no one told me about that option, I was dismissed as having too good hearing ), would my hearing went through the drop it did in last few years.
However, I think with this new aids and streaming and training (focused listening, in my case, learning german ), my brain is finally getting the kick it needs.

So, yeah, I’d definitely recommend going for aids sooner, with what I know today.
Maybe that will help with noises, especially since aids have a cut off of too loud sounds which can be adjusted
I noticed I like it on my normal ear as well - they’re now also working on saving my nerves

@jay658 said:

I assume the audiologist enhanced frequencies that distort less and suppressed frequencies that caused more distortion.

Nope.
My brain coped with it better after several months of it, and focused training. When I think about it, I still hear all the distortion, but now it’s definitely impacting my comprehension a bit less

We can’t even find out where exactly distortion happens / what causes it, I can’t find ENT or clinic where I could do some tests to confirm that. I’ve tried. No success. Hell, I can’t even get quickSIN or similar test here because health insurances don’t care about it, so fitters don’t have them (since they won’t get paid for those things if they state they did it, or something along those lines).

That’s why I know we didn’t tweak aids to help with the distortion in any such way. Just plain REM based speech mapping as a base.
I’m highly involved in my fittings, and I even DIY for options and coordinate with my fitter. So yeah, I know what we did

Also, it takes time to figure out things, and to find your peace. If you open your heart it will come sooner but it’s still a process.

Thanks again for your awesome response, it makes me feel better. BTW, I have an online appointment tomorrow morning with a psychiatrist. I will soon seek hearing aids.

I often feel that there is some kind of sympathetic resonance in my bad left ear due to the markedly reduced hearing in the low frequencies. The low frequency tones cause some sort of feed back in my left ear. It goes away if I reduce the loudness. However, my own voice can create the feedback too.

If I use the Apple earbuds in noise transparency mode I get less feedback because the sounds are attenuated in the low end and enhanced in the high frequencies. IN addition I can have less loudness on the TV.

The question for you is: Does providing more loudness to the bad ear with a hearing aid lessens the sensation of distortion? That is the impression I got from reading freezerman404 above. It seems that symmetric hearing lessens the distortion. What do you think?

BTW, I was prescribed 20 tabs of Xanax and have only used 5 tabs when I was really desperate. They made everything mellow, but I know they are addictive.

IN your opinion: Which is the best hearing aid that one can personally tweak. I am looking for one where I can increases or attenuate frequencies or even use compression. Can that be done with an app or does that require the audiologist?

BTW, I am OK with giving up music for at least a year and then try a comeback.

Thanks again!

In my case, distortion was greater with increasing loudness. To the point that at first testing my wrs was something like 30%@60db, 60%@80db and 40%@90db. I forgot the exact numbers.

However, after this long training (both passive when just streaming to both ears and active when I stream only into my bad ear and I’m highly focused - learning German vocab), I don’t have such sharp fall anymore.

And in some situations incresing the volume really helps with comprehension. Not always though.

Sound is still distorted but it doesn’t affect my comprehension as much as at the beginning of this new aids. Before this new aids I actually didn’t know/perceive that sound is distorted, since it was so low and useless anyway.

Which aids? Stick to the top manufacturers (phonak/unitron, oticon, resound, starkey and you’ll be fine). I’m reluctant about widex since it seems they do some things differently and following best fitting practices (namely rem based live speech mapping) might not yield the best results. However, my first/previous aid was widex, since that was the least horrible one, when every fitter only did what manufacturers propose, and not by following best practices.

Also, all but widex have accepted a new programming device which can be easily obtained on eBay for example. Check diy subforum for more details.

In quiet, all those brands, all their models (top and bottom ones), if properly fitted give the same result. Whoever tells you otherwise, lies.

Aids have limits. External microphones have limits. Depending on your loss and brain, you can get better results with external mic (and cheapest version of aids) than with top aids alone. And none of them will return your hearing to normal levels/remove distortion, but that part you already know.

No aids give real possibility for customers to really tweak them.
Yes, we can increase loudness, or maybe increase/decrease bass/treble, maybe mute mics and such for some situations but for proper changes that become new defaults, you need a fitter or go DIY route (like adding custom program, or changing the directionality of the mics in program x, changing the compression and so on).

More important than aid is to find a fitter who really knows and understands what they’re doing. Amount of incompetent sellers is huge.
Keep repeating - if they don’t provide value, you don’t pay them. So, best approach is to assume they are bad and let them convince you otherwise, than assuming they’re experts and believe whatever they say because huge chance is that you’ll get poor and expensive service.

That being said, I wouldn’t focus on diy now, but on finding the best possible fitter which ideally will be open that you spare him of appointments and just tweak some minor stuff alone while keeping him in the loop.
But most important is that they know how to properly fit your aids.

Oh yeah, brands are generally divided per which phone you use. All work with iphones without intermediary devices but only phonak/unitron work with all androids without intermediary devices. Work means being able to stream phone calls and media. Apps for remote control work in all combinations.
Some from the first group will support some new android phones as well, and those from the second group will have issues with some iphone models.

You did yourself huge favour by coming here before getting aids.

But also, be aware that not even I who write a lot, cannot condense hundreds of hours spend on digging through stuff to figure things out - in a few posts. So, be ready to dig in, learn. This forum provides a great baseline. But be aware it’s huge and knowledge you need to really understand your loss and aid capabilities is huge, so it takes time. If you feel masochistic, you can start by reading through my posts

That’s why starting with a great fitter is important and why great fitters are worth their weight in gold.

You aren’t supposed to dig so deeply, but unfortunately since so many of them focus on poor practice and own profit only, we have to become little experts in order to be able to sift through them and find the best one. And then we’ll probably be hooked on it and will want to dig in it ourselves
But it isn’t needed and shouldn’t be needed.
It’s sad that we cannot trust them without grilling them first, but that’s the world we live in - papers saying someone is expert are mostly worthless. And also, tons of reviews are useless, if only thing they say is ‘they’re nice’.

If you haven’t already, I suggest getting some basics through these two sources (this is less intense than digging through my posts)

best practices summarised by dr cliff1

https://blog.valuehearing.com.au/news/must-hearing-aid-features

https://blog.valuehearing.com.au/news/do-i-really-need-expensive-hearing-aid

And they have article about listening in noise, also recommended to read.

Both sources have youtube channel if you like that media instead.

But those tests are important! Tonal audiogram is just one piece of cake but actually pretty useless for understanding the loss and your needs.
Yeah it can say - you lack low/high frequency, you need more/less amplification but that’s about it.

Wrs tells us if aids will work for you and what roughly can you expect from them. If your wrs says 70%, that means no aids in the world can give you 100. So you’re doomed.

Snr will tell us if you need more help in noise than aids are able to provide eg if you’d benefit from external mics (eg if snr is higher than 7-10, since limit of aids in ideal condition is around 9-10). Or if even they aren’t enough (they do up to 15 ideally, so if you need even more, yeah, you’re doomed).

But ‘doomed’ does not mean you won’t hear. It just means ‘there is no tech that can give you option to hear without straining so hard’. Because normal hearing person does not think about listening per se, does not spend extreme amount of energy to comprehend what is spoken.
Doomed means it won’t be easy and it probably will be hard. That means lip reading, subtitles, and whatever you can get in order to make it a bit easier. Doomed means listening in complex environments will exhaust you. But preparing yourself, taking breaks, will help with coping.

But yes, doomed means you’ll have to find a bunch of coping mechanisms unlike normal hearing people or those with high wrs (90+) and low snr (less than 5).
In that sense if you’re doomed, that means you’re going to think more about those coping methods and preparing yourself for listening than other people will.

But it’s doable.

I’m among doomed ones. Understanding limitations helped me to figure out coping mechanisms.

@jay658 said:

But that is a quiet booth.

Wrs measures the ability of your brain to process the clear input. It’s always in quiet if you say wrs, everything else has different name eg ‘wrs in (white) noise’. So that’s all fine. Additional info is at which db output, but it’s less relevant, since it uses the lowest amplification with which you get the best score. Usage of db info is to see which type of aid is needed, eg if you need 100db loud sound, you need power aids.

However, it indirectly shows how much your cochlea is damaged.

Mine is significantly damaged, yours is even worse.

My first wrs was 65, no matter the amplification (ok, even worse, with higher amplification it was worse, but that changed after a few months on new aids, now it is the same no matter the amplification, and roughly around 70)
My good ear is 100% at 65db. We didn’t test lower except for seeing where I can hear something, I think it was at 40? On bad ear ‘something’ was at 65…

However, for insurance purposes, we did combo of wrs based tests the other day. In terms, we checked how many words I can understand. Source was 65db on speaker in front of me, with or without noise on speaker behind me. Distance is 1m from the speaker in both directions.
Results:
Without aids, in quiet 90. With them 100.
Without aids in white bg noise, 65. With them 65.
With them and roger select below the speaker, 100.

Cochlear implant candidacy starts at 40-50, depending on the country.

If you then remember that you shouldn’t guess words but repeat only what you really heard, if you want the objective measure, it shows you how the whole process isn’t quite exact science.

For this your wrs, I’d look into doing the cochlear implant evaluation. Not to do it (now), but for the purpose of having more tests done and to understand better your loss. It won’t get better with time, only worse. So having the baseline in many tests is much better than having just one test done.

I did one but at wrong place so they didn’t do proper testing. So fast my best reliable tests I can do with my fitter.

However the fact that I cannot find a proper assessment here doesn’t matter anymore since I plan to move to a new country (Switzerland) in next few months, so I’ll need to find a proper fitter/clinic there. Or will travel back to Berlin once a year for this good but limited tests with my current fitter.

If all else fails I’ll go knock on sonova headquarters there and beg for some proper assessment. Unless I manage to land a job with them and befriend someone from the department which has testing equipment
I just wonder if that’s good or bad stuff to put in cover/motivation letter when applying for a job there since I definitely plan to apply for some positions there once I get work permit, judging by what they seek.

Sonova is owner of phonak, my aid, and also they have CI brand. If they don’t have proper testing equipment, then I really don’t know who does