← Return to Anyone experience rapid progressive hearing loss in one ear?

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@joyces

This is only a way to treat one of the symptoms, but it IS important. Combat balance issues by actively working on balance a few minutes EVERY DAY. Start by standing with your feet fairly close together, eyes closed. At first, you'll begin to "wobble" quite soon, but you should be able to be stable for a minute or so with practice. Then, walk a short safe distance with your eyes closed. While you're doing that, think about what your feet tell you, because they know a great deal more than you'd expect. You can walk in your house at night with all the lights out (there will be a little ambient light), instead of walking with eyes closed. You can also walk outside in low light situations (no street lights, for example); this is especially helpful if uneven surfaces are involved. If you walk without using vision for even a few minutes every day, you'll see a big improvement in balance and eye-hand coordination within a month or less. You can also practice dressing while standing next to a counter or table without touching the counter or table. Putting on your socks is especially good to learn better balance. What you are doing is avoiding using your second balance system (vision), replacing it with proprioception (the info offered by your feet, ankles, knees, hips, etc.). It's natural to use vision when your primary inner ear balance system isn't working well, but every time you move your head your focal point changes and you're disoriented--imbalanced. I know this sounds too simple to work, but, trust me, it really, really does work.

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Replies to "This is only a way to treat one of the symptoms, but it IS important. Combat..."

Thank you @muffincat and @joyces. The balance exercise sounds interesting, I am going to give it a try. I just came back from ENT and now I officially have an un-serviceable ear. ENT said there is nothing he could do. Just have to hope whatever happened that caused my hearing loss on one side, will not spread to the other side. There is no true test for autoimmune disease but if hearing loss spreads to the other ear, he said that is autoimmune. It's like a time bomb and I don't know when it's going to trigger. I am very depressed and at the same time I am trying to digest the information. I need to learn how to live with one ear hearing. The options for me are: don't do anything, use CROS hearing aid or cochlear implant. Does anyone has experience with CROS?
Can someone tell me if the blocked feeling and heavy head on the bad ear side are common for unilateral hearing loss?

I could not hear from my left side unless they are really loud but I can't understand a word, but for my right side, some sound (like silver dining ware hit the table) is too sharp for my ear now. Hearing test did not show any issues on the right so I don't understand why my brain perceives sound differently now.