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The Annoyed Man wrote: Sat May 30, 2020 9:38 am I have a progress report.

The day before yesterday, I noticed a couple of times that when one of my grandkids' voices hit a certain volume and pitch, I could detect it as a thin buzzing noise in my left ear. There was no speech recognition, just a buzzing, but I could hear the noise....faintly. And then yesterday, while driving to my ENT doc's office to have my hearing retested, I found that I could hear some of the bass notes from my car stereo in that ear. They still sound muted and buzzy, but I can hear them!

On the hearing re-test, I could actually hear some of the tones in my left ear .... again, not clearly, but I could hear them. I've shown some improvement at the bottom and upper registers, but only a little bit in the middle registers....which is where most human speech occurs. My doctor called it a "marked improvement" so that’s good news. I’ve been up-rated from "profoundly" deaf, to "moderately to severely" deaf in that ear. It was enough of an improvement to warrant another injection of steroids and further retesting, so that was good news.

Going forward, I have an appointment for a 3rd hearing test in 2 weeks. At that point—if there has been further improvement—he’ll give me a final third steroid injection and then a 4th hearing test a week or two following that. He said that 3 times is about the limit of how many times he can administer a large dose of steroids like that without beginning to play hobb with the rest of my hormonal system. So, whatever I can get back by the end of the final retesting period, that’s what I’ll be living with going forward—assuming that there’s additional improvement between now and two weeks from now. If there isn’t any, well.....

Hearing aids.... My doctor said that for a hearing aid to be applicable, there has to be some speech recognition in that ear. As of right now, I don’t have any speech recognition on that side. I can hear indistinct buzzing and thumping noises if they’re in the right register and they’re loud enough. So that will have to improve to a point where I can at least vaguely understand some speech in that ear before he'll prescribe a hearing aid for me.

I so appreciate your prayers, and thank you to all of you for your generosity in that regard. My prayer going forward is for continued improvement; and if not a for complete recovery, then at least for enough recovery to the point where a hearing aid makes sense.

Thanks again to everybody.

AndyC wrote: Sat May 30, 2020 5:41 pm Excellent.

I was completely deaf in my left ear for 2 weeks after someone touched off a .357 THV about 3 feet from me (I was still getting my muffs on when the range was declared hot). It was a huge relief when the hearing started to slowly return to the point where I considered it normal, so I'm really hoping it'll be the same for you.

The Annoyed Man wrote: Sat Jul 18, 2020 5:02 pm UPDATE.....

I had my final hearing test on July 7th, and the results were not good. There was no improvement from the previous test. I’m still mostly deaf in my left ear, and it is likely to remain that way.

The audiologist will be phoning me in the next week or two to set up a demonstration appointment to try out some different hearing aids. They’re ambivalent about whether or not I’ll be able to tolerate them, but I guess it’s worth a try. But even if they will work for me, I’m doubtful that I can afford them right now. We'll see.