One of my emails this morning was from Harvard Health with the subject line:
Now hear this: Don’t ignore sudden hearing loss
The idea was if you have sudden hearing loss don’t assume it’s only that the ear is plugged up. It could be “sudden sensorineural hearing loss, or SHL, a kind of nerve deafness.” Oops! That happened to my left ear months ago. I’ve tried unplugging it but haven’t had any luck so I was waiting until my next doctor’s appointment this fall.
No sense worrying about it. If it were SHL and I had any chance of regaining hearing in that ear I had a 10-14 day window to get it treated. It was way too late for that now.
But the article turned out to be reassuring — there’s an easy way to test. Hum. If both ears are working fine then you will hear the sound equally in each ear. If you have SHL you won’t hear the hearing in the affected ear. Neat! I can hear the humming a lot better in my affected ear, which means it’s just plugged up.
You can simulate this by humming and covering one of your ears. How neat is that? Needless to say I’m doing a lot of humming right now.
May 6, 2020
I would have been breathing a big, big sigh of relief when I heard the humming in both ears!
Yes, I was very happy!
Well that is interesting
I had never heard of that before. It was a big surprise.
That is very interesting. Mom has to have her ears cleaned out by the doctor once in a while too. Our Dad has ringing in his ears that is very annoying. Our ears are perfectly fine; in fact, Mom says we hear EVERYTHING!!!
Woos, Lightning and Timber
I imagine you do hear everything. Especially if food drops on the floor. 😀
OMW! there is always something out there I never heard of.. I have now HUMMED both ears at one time twice and each ear 3 times… they are working… thanks for sharing. my friend had the same thing you do and hers was a big clump of wax. when mine did that, my doctor told me to use the Debrox Wax remover, for 4 days, it worked. you may have already tried that.
I tried it, and it didn’t work — I was surprised. I was also surprised by the article and pleased that the test was so simple.
Just tried it and I can definitely hear the humming louder in one ear than the other.
It’s interesting, isn’t it?
Yes, I can hear the humming louder in my right ear but I’ve had hearing loss in my left ear since I was a kid.
That’s early to have hearing loss. 🙁