If you notice one day that you can’t hear in one ear, you might be tempted just ignore it. You might think that it’s simply some kind of sinus congestion or something like that. That could be the case, but it also could be Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss (SSNL).
About 66,000 people each year in the US experience SSNL. For these people, the sudden hearing loss is a bright red flag, signaling that without prompt treatment, they could lose their hearing permanently. It’s a genuine emergency.
More broadly, a sudden hearing loss can arise with many different conditions, many of which are treatable. Sometimes you can recover your hearing. Here are some of the conditions that can cause a sudden loss of hearing:
- An infection
- Blockage from congestion
- An ototoxic drug, such as some chemotherapy
- An acoustic neuroma, usually a small benign tumor on a nerve
- A head injury
- Autoimmune inner ear disease
- Vascular problems
- Sudden sensorineural hearing loss (SSNL)
The urgency for treatment comes in when your hearing loss is SSNL. If you get treatment for SSNL in time, generally within 7 to 14 days, you have a good chance of recovering your hearing. The sooner the treatment, the better your chances of regaining hearing and the more hearing you might recover. Sadly, after about 2 weeks, treatment success for SSNL drops off sharply and permanently.
When I Lost My Hearing Overnight
This topic is deeply personal for me. Overnight, at age 45, I lost my hearing. This was 1985. We didn’t have the internet yet, so I couldn’t look it up, and nobody I knew had ever mentioned it. Not suspecting anything dramatic, I waited several days to see if my hearing would come back and then made an appointment with my doctor (of course, the first available appointment was weeks later.) My doctor referred me to an audiologist (more weeks), who tested my hearing and sent me to an otologist (you guessed it, more weeks). He prescribed steroids, an MRI, balance testing, and what felt like quarts of blood tests. The treatment had no impact, but I did learn how bad my balance had become and got a stunning report about how degraded my hearing was. I had permanent, severe-to-profound hearing loss in my right ear and moderate loss in my left.
Losing my hearing was devastating. It threw my life into chaos. For one thing, I was a math teacher at a community college. Teaching felt impossible with such hearing loss. Even after I got hearing aids, I couldn’t hear my students’ questions. Even meeting them face to face presented big communication barriers. Basic communication became formidable. Hearing loss hit every aspect of my life – my family, my friendships, even the pharmacist and grocery clerks, you name it. Well, actually, many of you know exactly what I mean.
The next few years were tough. I had to find a new way to make a living, so I went back to school for training. Hearing loss, my own sense of personal trauma, and the upheaval those entailed made everything much harder. My marriage crumbled, my children seemed to wander between being scared and being angry. Things were a mess.
Coping with My Hearing Loss and Saving Myself
What saved my sanity was a movie, of all things. Fortunately, this era was when the movie The Princess Bride was released. In the movie, Princess Buttercup and her dashing pirate escaped from her awful fate through the Fire Swamp, edging around mini volcanos and steam geysers, and attacking monsters. The Fire Swamp became my humorous safety valve. It was much more fun to imagine myself escaping geysers with a handsome pirate than going to one more doctor’s appointment. Best of all, just like Buttercup and the Dread Pirate Roberts lived happily ever after, I started a new career at Microsoft, remarried, and lost 10 pounds. I learned a whole new way to deal with life’s ups and downs.
Circling back to the main topic: If you suddenly lose your hearing, please don’t wait. Instead, please see a medical expert right away. The window for success is ridiculously small, just 7 to 14 days. If you can’t get an immediate appointment with your doctor, go to the emergency room. Your hearing — and your life as you know it — might depend on it.
About the author
Becky Montgomery writes about living with hearing loss from a very personal place – she has progressive hearing loss. She managed with hearing aids for 20-odd years but now wears bilateral cochlear implants.
Becky is now retired and works hard at catching up on her reading and movie watching. In the past, she worked at Microsoft, where she was deeply involved in the company’s Employee Resource Group for Disability. She’s also a former HLAA-WA Board member.