Hearing Loss: Come introduce yourself and connect with others

@coppermoon Sudden hearing loss requires immediate attention. Please see an ENT (Ear, Nose, Throat) doctor right away. Steroids can help, but they have to used soon after onset.
Tony in Michigan

Hi Nancy. I would absolutely get a cochlear implant again. My success has been beyond my expectations.

Dennis

You should see an ENT specialist as soon as possible. Sudden hearing loss is nothing to push aside. Sometimes steroids can help bring hearing back if they are given within a few days of the sudden onset. Urgent care is wonderful for many things, but the medical professionals working in urgent care have very basic knowledge of hearing loss.

I would recommend that you see an ENT immediately.

You need to see an ENT as soon as possible.

agree with all the above. i waited over the weekend, and then the nearest clinic told me it was nothing he could figure out, went to ENT a couple days later, who said: you needed to be seen immediately. As everyone else said, please go immediately. It could be something else, but you need to find out. good luck.

Thank you for your positive response. Everyone I have talked with who has a CI has also given me positive feedback. My biggest concern is whether the Meniere's will be affected by the implant-- will it be better or worse? I guess there's no telling that since it's different with each of us. All I can do is trust my surgeon and audiologist and hope for the best outcome possible.

You are welcome. As far as menieres is concerned, a cochlear implant should have no positive or negative effect on symptoms because vertigo doesn't come from the cochlear, but from the semicircular canals. My menieres has essentially burned out, but I do still get occasional vertigo even though I am bilateral cochlear implants. I didn't think cochlear implants would help my type of hearing loss. I figured it was different because of menieres. The Dr was so confident in my success, it led me to decide I had nothing to lose. I couldn't get more deaf.

Wish you much success!

I'm more confident of the need for CI surgery since meeting with my surgeon today. She says I'm an excellent candidate and should do well. I feel, as you so, that my menieres may be burned out since I haven't had vertigo for two years, but if I have an episode before the surgery date, she may need to destroy the balance center in my implanted ear so that there will be no vertigo afterwards . Time will tell on that issue.

Meniere's and balance, plus aging: I wouldn't have the balance center destroyed unless I had gone to a really good vestibular rehab center and honestly done VRT exercises, which you need to do for the rest of your life, EVERY DAY. I've had Meniere's most of my life, but it only became a serious problem in my 40s, after I quit taking birth control pills (i.e., hormones). After four years of searching for a safe combo of estrogen and progesterone, I quit having crises of several hours 2-3 times every week and was able to do rehab, which I did every day. Then, two years ago, I went bilateral. Initially, it only affected my hearing so that I was functionally nearly totally deaf, but after a few months I began having frequent crises, so I finally found a doc in this little town who was willing to prescribe large doses of hormones for someone 78. Within two weeks, my hearing in the newly-affected ear returned to the poor level it had been before going bilateral and I was able to wear my aid once again (less recruitment). The next step was to schedule a series of appts. at the Vestibular Center in Portland, Oregon, one of the best in the nation, for follow-up to regain stability. I learned a couple of new things to do, to counteract not only having gone bilateral, but to offset age-related loss of nerve sensitivity in my lower legs: I need to work hard to "listen" to what my feet tell me (proprioception). At 79, I am once again driving two hours each way, hiking/wading 7 miles along a wild river to collect data for our state fisheries agency--no cell reception for 20 miles. I also cross the lower mainstem (a real challenge) and do some serious scrambling every spring to place a temperature monitor above a waterfall, and then to check it midsummer and remove it before fall rains make that impossible. I wouldn't have done work in that wild watershed for the last 29 years if I hadn't learned to do VRT...every stinking day.