Dang it, I'm Deaf....

OK let me explain:

I'm 54.  When I turned 53, I woke up one January morning and something was very different. My head felt subtly different. I had a fullness in bass for about 2 weeks before this but now it seemed I had no bass in my left ear.  I did a frequency sweep test on YouTube and discovered that I lost everything below 400hz and everything about 8000hz.  Everything in the middle of that was slightly subdued.

I've had a 8000hz notch since an ear infection at age 25. but could hear above and below that fine.

I was so sad, depressed and angry. 

I live near the Keck School of Medicine (La Crescenta, California) so I quickly started getting treatment and hearing tests to get my hearing back. I got prednisone treatment and an injection directly through my eardrum.  Talk about painful!

After about 3 months of treatment and testing, they basically gave up and suggested a hearing aid.

About this time, my brother was visiting from Florida and had needed a case study volunteer to finish his Homeopathy degree. Someone had dropped out and he needed to fill that spot. I volunteered and half-jokingly asked 'can you get my hearing back?'.  He smiled and said 'I'm pretty sure I can'.  I was skeptical but had nothing to lose.

He explained that he would not treat my ear.  He would treat my body...get it back in balance...and the body would heal itself. I felt fine otherwise so not sure why he would need to treat my body...I'm relatively fit.

3 days of 1 hour sessions simply asking me lots of questions. Questions that go back as far as I could remember. What childhood illnesses had I encountered (mumps etc,), What antibiotics had I taken and for what reason. Am I often thirsty for water? Is one side of my body cold? Do I sleep on my side or back? How is my libido? Do I prefer warm drinks or cold drinks...etc,etc, 

Then a single treatment: A pill in a glass of water shaken 10 times...then a tablespoon of the water.  Throw the rest of the water out and done.

(I will not tell you the name of the remedy, because for each person it will be different...even for the same problem).

Weeks went by with no change.  My brother would call and ask if I had a reaction.  'What reaction?' I asked. 'You'll know' he said. Everyone has a different reaction.

Another week...no reaction. Then, I wake up one morning, feel dizzy and vomit. I skip work because I believe that I had Covid. Next morning I feel fine...actually better than fine so I get in my truck to go to work and the truck sounds funny. It's a new truck so I'm hoping and praying it's my hearing coming back.  Yup! over the next three days hearing is back like a vengeance.

Still have the 8000hz notch but now able to hear down to 23hz and up to 17kz.

Also: No more eczema, better sense of smell, better balance.  Used to wake up at 3am and stumble to the bathroom holding furniture occasionally...now I wake up and just walk...great balance!

Had no idea that 54 felt this good.  I feel better now than I did at 47.  I had suffered a very slow and constant decline over about 7 years and did not know!

Take my advice, don't give up. 

And try homeopathy. It works. 

Also, lose that much hearing and soundstage is gone forever. I had no idea how important bass was to soundstage! 

Also watch out for ototoxic drugs: aspirin, ibuprofen, antibiotics etc. In regular medium-high doses, they can be ear killers.

I sit with my left ear facing the speakers and able to enjoy full stereo sound and hear both channels evenly

I'm doing the same but I have now placed the loudspeakers closer together and that is working very well. Thanks for your input.

i will add you to my prayer list.

Thanks Jim, I'm getting over the disappointment and working to get the best solution now. My neighbor with covid needs a prayer more than I do, if you have room on your list. 

Try Homeopathy.

Thanks for the input but the cochlear surgery pretty much guaranties recovery of hearing is not possible.  

Having a cochlear implant myself, I find using full-size headphones make all the difference in  the world - especially having tuned the hearing by using Sonarwork's Sound ID app.

Russ—so sorry to read this. But don't lose hope. As the miraculous homeopathic cure sandthemall describes shows, strange things can happen.

Three years ago, I was flying home from Prague on a plane with a shrieking infant right behind me. But those hours of torture were only the beginning. Thee days after getting home, both my wife and I came down with high fevers and ear aches; we guessed that baby had been sick and was shrieking in pain. Anyway, two days after that, I woke up with almost complete deafness in my left ear. I couldn't hear my fingers rubbing the outer ear, couldn't hear fingers snapping, a very disorienting sense of space, etc. My doctor prescribed oral prednisone, but sent me to an audiologist. He did a test with headphones that diagnosed a profound loss in that ear; he then did the test direct to the bone, which indicated the same loss. He told me this meant the damage was to the auditory nerves, and that it was not due to a blockage in the ear canal that felt like the cause. He called the condition "sudden idiopathic hearing loss" and explained that "idiopathic" meant no one knew what caused it—and that, accordingly, no one knew how to cure it. He suggested injections of prednisone into the eardrum (no, thanks!), or an expensive experimental treatment called a hyperbaric oxygen chamber that insurance would not pay for and that carried a risk of explosive immolation (again: no thanks!). In any case, he assured me that my hearing wasn't coming back.

But I didn't believe him. For one thing, I had a sensation of stuffiness in that ear that seemed to indicate a blockage which might clear. And, in fact, within a couple of weeks, I did occasionally swallow deeply enough to briefly clear the ear canal (or whatever it was), restoring partial hearing for a few moments. And then...gradually...I got almost all of my hearing back. Now, three years later, my left ear measures almost as well as my right; I'm back to being able to hear water dripping from three rooms away.

The lesson, I guess, is not to lose hope, and not to assume medical science has all the answers. If the pandemic has taught us anything, it should be that. Human physiology is astoundingly, confoundingly complicated and—to paraphrase the doctor from the old TV show "Northern Exposure"—the human body is a miraculous self-righting machine. Hang in there, and good luck!