(no subject)
Well I just got back from the new otolaryngologist and while this guy definitely seemed to be more on the ball, the options I have are rather limited. First of all, I definitely have hearing loss and the hearing loss is not uniform, it is more pronounced in the right ear which is indicative of noise damage. The sort of okay part of that is that the hearing loss is in higher frequencies and two thirds of the range of my hearing is normal. I also was able to understand 95% of the regular spoken words and to be honest the other 5% I had to have repeated mainly due to being raised in the south and more familiar with that accent. The weird blown speaker noise I hear in my right ear is my brain attempting to interpret the loss or scrambling of auditory signals from my ear. It is thinking "oh well that signal must mean an obstruction or water in the ear, thus I will hear it as distortion." Hearing loss can be funny it seems when coupled with tinnitus. The less promising part of all this has to do with my options. The doctor gave me a 14-day regimen of steroids to take, tapering off in the last week. If that doesn't fix things then I pretty much just have to live with it as it is noise-related (which is why it is only in one ear). Also, if there is not improvement I will get an MRI to look at my auditory nerves and structure to make sure there are no lesions of any sort, just to ensure (though not likely as there is a clear cause in this case) that there are no larger issues. The long and short of this is pretty clear, this was caused by progressive exposure to excessive noise levels at various music events definitely, but as there is a pronounced difference it is likely the result of the sound at the one event at the Museum of Natural History where the idiot was blowing the highs all to shit way too loud. This means that yes, it could happen to any one of us who likes to go out and hear music, so maybe wearing those earplugs is a good idea. Now I personally have issues with most earplugs as they distort sound, even fairly good ones. Hopefully that will change with the custom ones I ordered that are not supposed to do that (160 bucks, worth it I think). But in retrospect even shitty sound would be better than this, so if you like not constantly hearing a fucked up noise in one ear I suggest you try to remember to wear some earplugs. I would pretty much give anything to have this fixed.