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Single Sided Hearing Loss
I'm amazed how many posts there have been lately about single sided hearing loss and think having our own thread might be beneficial. I'm missing something really important about this issue and hope someone will please help me understand it. I used to explain my hearing issue to people who asked as follows: when you have two good ears, sound comes in from both sides and your brain can select what it wants to "hear". When you have only one good ear, sound comes in on one side and your brain can't separate out what it wants to "hear." It's all noise. Is that right or am I totally wrong? If it is right and I get the cros hearing aid, how will moving sound from my deaf ear over to my good ear make any difference in my ability to hear? Sound is still going in one side and will still be noise. I understand that if I need the bicros hearing aid, it will pick up the sound from my deaf ear, move it to my good ear and enhance the ability to hear in my good ear. This is really complex. I'm rooting for the new technology in the article Ken sent out about growing new tiny hairs in the ears of hard of hearing people to help them hear more clearly. Thanks for helping me understand this. Nancy
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You are welcome. Always have a list of questions when going (I start my list two weeks before a Dr. visit so everything I remember during that time gets on there). There are so many issues to ask or know about - fit, sound enhancement, (I have settings for cutting out road noise when I'm driving), T-coil, louder, softer, pitch adjustment, frequency adjustment, and then apps and accessories (yes, accessories like cleaning kit, wax trap, anti-lose clips so when they fall out, you don't step on them or lose them, and more
@th1. I had no idea it was this involved. You've really helped me! Thanks. I'm not sure how to do this, so would you please forward your informative note on tinnitus and hearing aids to @wendymb. I know she will really appreciate getting it. Thanks! Nancy
not sure how to forward as requested. Hopefully she is in on this discussion group?
@th1. She must be...Good thought. I need to get my light box out...it's another gloomy day here and my brain is in low gear.
@ken82. Hi Ken, thanks for your note and for recommending Zoom and Skype a few weeks ago. I've had two Zoom chats with my nieces and found that seeing them as they were speaking made all the difference in the world to me. I didn't experience the lag time that contributes to my hating my cell phone, and the conversation flowed easily. Since you are a scientist and professor, you probably understand this and hopefully will be willing to help me understand it. What is it that makes hearing where there is background noise so difficult...for me with single sided hearing and others with hearing loss. What does a hearing aid and the accessories Julie told us about do to let the wearer filter out and ignore background noise and focus on what we want to hear? Are they minicomputers that mimic the brain's ability to do this? Thanks for whatever insight you can provide on this! I hope you're having a bright, sunny day there. I had a beautiful farm by Lake Louise State Park near LeRoy, MN and the Iowa border and consider northern Iowa down to Ames and over to Decorah as home too. Where do you live? Nancy
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1 ReactionJulie responding here as I just saw this. The secret to the assistive listening devices working, is the elimination of that background noise. Sound comes through a microphone in the speakers presence (the closer to the mouth the better), and is sent wirelessly to the hearing aids that a person is wearing. The desired sound bypasses all the ambient noise. The hearing aids must be equipped with a component that can receive the signals from the speaker's microphone. That's what hearing loops, FM systems and Infrared systems do. BlueTooth can also send signals wirelessly over a distance, however, A BT microphone can only transmit to the hearing aid that it's paired to. A mike that is connected to the public address system in a venue, allows those other systems to transmit to as many hearing aids equipped with telecoils that are being used in the venue.
It's hard to understand the value of this equipment without being able to try it. Ask your audiologist to demonstrate how telecoils work. You'll be amazed. Julie PS: Don't let them tell you it's outdated, old technology. Plus it adds zero cost to a hearing aid.
@julieo4 Julie -- This is so interesting and helpful. Thanks! Nancy
So true!
nla4625 I have the bilateral acoustics (NF2) and when one was surgically removed my facial nerve was affected so I am saying how lucky you are that that didn't happen with you. Perhaps your tumor was relatively small? Do you know the size of it? Mine was considered of medium to medium large size at 3 mm (and I did have a very top surgeon although that was in 1996). I seem not to have seen Ellen's reference to "non invasive surgery" (which sounds like a contradiction in terms) and I am not sure how to search for it but I am very curious about that. Can you or someone help me find that, or quote it here?
@barbb I have bilateral acoustic neuromas and NF2 as well. I think what was being referred to by noninvasive surgery was Gamma Knife Radio Surgery. It is a type of radiation, actually. I had both tumors treated at the same time. The tumors aren't removed, but the gamma knife is supposed to stop them from growing and hopefully shrink them. I had that April of 2020. I had my last brain MRI in December and it appears that they are stable. I will have my next MRI in a year. I have lost most of the hearing in my left ear, but kept most of the hearing in my right. The surgeon felt the possibility of losing all my hearing with regular surgery was about 70%, which is why we tried Gamma knife. I have balance issues, but it could be much worse. It is just a waiting game now to see what will happen with my hearing and the tumors. I think that is the hardest part. Not knowing if I will lose all my hearing and how long that might take if I do. So that is just a bit about my situation.