Kathymann2184
December 4, 2018 was life changing for me. Your description of your hearing loss is almost verbatim of my experience, except I did not have knee surgery. Days before, I had a significant hit on my head with a car door, and I also had recently had a sinus infection. The theory was a virus or maybe the head hit contributed, but nothing was ever determined as to the exact cause of my SSHL. I was preparing food, and heard like a pop, then a sensation like you get when you have when you have a bad cold and the ear stops up. I carried in with my day and woke up the next day with the severe vertigo and nausea. I live alone had to crawl for two days until the vertigo tapered off enough for me to drive to town to the doctor. The sent me to PT and did a referral to the ENT which was a week later. They did the steroid shot, an MRI and 10 days of steroid pills two separate rounds. The damage was done. I totally understand what is like to not know where sound is coming from and turning in a circle to look. The tinnitus is constant to this day and changes frequency many times a day. I tried many things in the next few months. I grasped at every article and study I could find. I even did acupuncture for a couple of months all to no avail.
Now, that is the bad news. The good news is that I relocated to the DFW area right at the height of Covid. I made an appointment with an ENT here still looking for answers. They performed a conductive hearing implant of a Cochlear Osia 2 which has allowed me to function much better. I can tell which direction sound is coming from and it makes the other sound a little clearer without overwhelming my good ear. My right ear has no hearing capability whatsoever, but the processor that sits on a magnet in my bone carries sound to my left side. Research it. Medicare did cover it. At the time they were not covering Cochlear implants, but they do now in certain circumstances, so that is another option for you. Research the none conduction Osia 2 versus the Cochlear implant. Both products are Cochlear brand. Another option is the cros hearing aids where you wear a hearing aid that directs the sound to the second hearing aid in your good ear. I was not a good candidate for that method due to abnormalities in my outer right ear that prevented the hearing aid from staying put.
At any rate, you may never completely figure out the cause, but you can move forward to a solution. I still cannot be in extremely noisy situations like noisy restaurants, but the Osia has definitely made my life better. You just have to get used to closed caption TV and even some movie theaters are accommodating. Life is still good, just different. Of course I have had almost seven years to get used to my new normal.