SSHL, Labrynthitis? What is wrong with me :(

I’m not a doctor and I never heard of labrynthitis before. However, I did suffer SSHD years ago in the better of my two esrd.zI know how you feel, I lived it myself. Because my left ear has some nerve damage, I’m hard of hearing in that ear. I wasn’t wearing my hearing aids that day. When my hearing went, I thought I went deaf in both. A day later I put both hearing aids in, no sound one side, buy my other ear was fine as long as I word the HA. I had vertigo, was dizzy and could not keep any food down.

I just looked up both conditions. With labrynthitis, it’s all dissiness without hearing loss; SSHD is vertigo with hearing loss. Ot sounds by what you are saying is you have SSHD.

Did you have a cold or virus recently? My SSHD came 1 1/2 months after a virus. Forget GP’s and emergency rooms, they are clkueless as to what is going on. The emergency room said it was probably a middle ear in fection that would go away in several days to weeks. I was told to follow up with PCP as soon as possible.

This is common and it is a mistake doctors and emergency rooms mae all the time when one presents with this. It also sounds like you waited before seeing a doctor. You should have gone to one right away. Your doctor sould have referred you to an ENT. When you have problems with your ear, you don’t feel pain or infection, and they din’t see anything in your ear, that is considered an emergency by ENT’s.requiring immediate care.

The reason I say you should see a doctor right away or ian emergency is timing is everything here for the best chance to catch this and restore any hearing loss. The sooner after the onset, the better the chance of regaining some or all your hearing back. You have a two week window to start treating this. I couldn’t get into the ENT associated with my medical group for 2 weekks. After 2 weeks people rarely get their hearing back. The steroids is a proper course of treatment. Another is hyperbaric chamber treatments. It’s not a guarantee, but the sooner after onset you start these treatments you stand a better chance of recovering your hearing. Not trying to be a downer or scare you, but this is what happened to me.

It’s not the end of the world and don’t kill yourself. You didn’t mention if and how elwell you hear with one ear. If the hearing isn’t the best, a hearing aid will be a good start. Yes audi’s and even Costco can sell one hearing aid. Have an evaluation done to see ifvyoubare candidate for a cochlear implant place in your cochlear. That’s what I have and it’s been working great for four years. Go over to the section of the forum named cochlear implant. Don’t give up you can do this!

Your right, I had one day of hearing loss that returned but didnt have hearing loss again until the day after taking prednisone.

Unfortunately my GP wont do anything else for me until I see ENT on the 30th Jan.

I am UK based, its been absolutely stressful just trying to see an ENT.
I am under an ENT consultant and have been since i was 12. I had a cyst in the ear drum that burst and ruptured all my ear bones and they fused together so hearing was around 40%. This is the same ear im having a problem with ( thankfully) although i didnt have much hearing in there to begin with is stressful that I cant hear anything but tinnitus!

I did have covid 2 weeks prior to ear issue so GP assumed Labrynthitis.

Anyway… i rang my ENT secretary directly and asked for an emergency appointment and the earliest he could see me was end of Feb. I rang around private clinics and earliest i could get was 1st Feb. When I went back to GP with hearing loss they rang ENT ( dont know why they didnt do this first time ) who prescribed prednisone and arranged an appointment for the 30th Jan.

Its been an absolute ball ache. I was willing to pay anything just to be seen within a few days!

It’s difficult to actually know what/if/when the fix is going to be without knowing the extent of the underlying damage. Unfortunately it’s a waiting game.

They can go either way; I’ve got a 37 year old father on my books with a permanent flat 70dB Sensorineural loss after a bout of covid picked up prior to Christmas ‘22. Came in later January, but it was too late.

Another lady, existing wearer, came in with a complaint that her aid was faulty after ‘it’ going quiet over the weekend, but I retested her and she had an additional SSNL. She’s recovered about 90% of the subsequent loss.

How long did it take for her to recover that 90% loss can i ask?

Im a bit worried I missed the window by not having treatment when i first noticed symptoms wasnt right with my ear even though i had no hearing loss at that current time.

I did take it day prior to losing it!

Can i also ask, is the Tinnitus temporary? Will it go once the hearing is damaged?

The Tinnitus is so bad and just makes it overall worse.

And would taking magnesium help at all?!

Sorry for all the questions. Just completely and utter gutted about the whole situation!

Like Neville says, the efficacy of the steroid dose is a ‘Hail Mary’: sometimes they come off.

I believe recovery for the lady who it worked for, was 4-8weeks: and included an improvement with the tinnitus.

Thanks all for the advice! Im literally waking up every day hoping it returns considering thats all i can do.

Ive suffered really bad health anxiety since i was around 25 and it’s practically ruined my life so you can imagine how ive taken this!

I think dealing with the loss would get better over time but the worry of losing it again in my only good ear is actually petrifying!

I can hear ok just feels like ive lost my surround system. Its such a weird feeling.

This truly is a disability in itself and its disheartening that no one knows really how to treat it.
Its crushing me, im getting married in 3 months and i feel its put a huge spanner in the works.

Im making my partner miserable by being miserable!

Sorry to be such a downer. i feel venting here is all i can do right now other than crying!

@Sophs50522 said:

Ive suffered really bad health anxiety since i was around 25 and it’s practically ruined my life

This is also something that a good therapist should be able to help you with. Seems worthwhile to invest in that now–as we all age health scares are nearly inevitable.

Having a sudden hearing loss in the other ear later is tremendously unlikely.

The impacts of hearing loss in one ear tend to be sound localization and hearing in noise, some impact on distance hearing too. Hearing in quiet is usually okay.

Congratulations on your wedding.

Id be happy just to gain atleast 20% just so i can wear a standard HA.

I feel for anyone who’s experienced this. Its really traumatic!

Hello @Sophs50522, welcome to the forum, been reading your post, and I can very much empathise with your current situation… It takes me back, to a time when I caught a viral flu, both ears went down, severe/profound threshold, horrendous tinnitus, it is the only time that I ever had an apology from the medical profession, my Doctor apologised for not giving me a steroid injection, when I returned to see him a couple of weeks after my first initial appointment, he didn’t realise it was a virus, and gave me a decongestant! Suffice to say, the damage was done… It might not have made any difference, as one of the A.uD’s said, it’s really a Hail Mary, and probably a 50-50 chance of regaining, all or some of your hearing back in the effected ear/ears…They don’t really know what causes Tinnitus, they know it can be caused with SSNHL (Sudden Sensory Neural Hearing Loss) some of the medical profession, believe with the absence of sound, the brain recreates it’s own sound, unfortunately it is nothing to do with inflammation, I believe the sound you hear, is some form of reaction from your brain, but in truth, the don’t actually know, the exact root cause! I am sorry to inform you, once you have Tinnitus, you usually have it for life, but the good news is, it will be variable, stress, anxiety, certain medications, depression, sometimes poor health, can and do crank it up several decibels, stress & anxiety have a severe detrimental overall effect on Tinnitus, perhaps the main culprits for extremely loud Tinnitus… Personally, I taught myself to relax when Tinnitus goes off the scale, and within 20 minutes or half an hour, it has gone down to barely audible, so nowadays I am totally relaxed about it, I know I can switch it off, in a reasonable timeframe, being philosophical about Tinnitus is key, excepting it as part of you, is another key, the third key, is relaxation… So there is hope, and hope is always a good thing… You know of course, I might bite someone’s hand off, if I was offered one good ear, instead of 2 bad ears, there is always someone worse off than yourself, at one time I worked with duel sensory losses, folks whom where, Blind & Deaf, they would put us all to shame, full of life, and full of fun, when ever I thought “Woe is me”, then I thought of these clients, and my troubles paled into insignificance… A few short years after SSNHL, like a bolt out the blue, I was hit with MD (Meniers Disease) just around when I was coming to terms with my hearing loss, I was hit with that affliction, basically, cluster attacks for around 8 years, vertigo, rampant tinnitus, fullness of ear, extremely poor balance, visual distortion, hearing distortion, extreme nausea, chronic fatigue, MD destroys your vestibular, basically your balance organ, and every attack is gradually eroding away what little residual hearing you have left, it’s incurable… Eventually the vertigo burns itself out, and you have a poor balance system, but you just survived 8 years of living hell, and you are now very deaf… That is what we humans do best, we survive, when life knocks us for six, we pick ourselves up, dust ourselves down, and we go again!!! My Social Worker, did a brilliant job on me, at the time, I didn’t realise she was manoeuvring me towards self help/self healing, by encouraging me to learn sign language, lip reading classes, I felt less isolated, and more comfortable in my self, I wasn’t alone, I gradually came out of my reclusive self, and basically learned how to live again, albeit was a different me, I had to live with Nowadays, I am absolutely fine, my balance isn’t great, especially in the dark, I’m fairly deaf, but so be it, I have excellent hearing aids, and nearly every Roger device, I hear well with Roger Eventually I was able to work again, first with deaf services (A Social Work Initiative) then Criminal Justice took me on as a supervisor, and I worked there till I retired… Chin up @Sophs50522 you have 2 beautiful kids, a future husband, there is much to look forward too…Sending you and your family a virtual hug Kev x

I also had a sudden additional loss in my teens and that is when my tinnitus gor very bad. It wasn’t waking me up at night but it would sometimes turn on like a siren and not stop, it was maddening! Like @kevels55 I learned how to bring the volume down with time, calming and meditation routines at first and now it is almost second nature to calm it down when it flares up.

Once your ears have settled you may find the tinnitus gets much better or goes away, you are still in the acute phase and should not assume anything yet. Once there is no more inflammation and no new changes are happening you will have a better picture of what your next steps will be.

Hearing loss and especially sudden hearing loss, is life changing but it’s not life ending. If you do turn out to have ongoing hearing loss and tinnitus after this you may want to consider a therapist to help you get through the initial stages of grief and adjustment mentally.

I had a SSHL in my R ear possibly 7-8 years ago. No one told me it was an emergency situation to be seen by ENT asap. I got tinnitus with it as well. The SSHL left me with severe profound ski slope loss. Hearing aids didn’t help me at all. 3 years after the SSHL I had a Cochlear implant insertion. Since the surgery I’ve had 2 more very small SSHL. With every SSHL I’ve had I’ve developed another tinnitus sound in my right ear. That’s 3 different tinnitus sounds in my R ear. Yes it’s very annoying, but I concentrate doing on other things and I manage to ignore the unwanted noise in my R ear.
Good luck to you.