Hearing Loss Sucks
Along with the TS and OCD I'm pretty sure I have an auditory processing disorder. I've been this way since I was in elementary school, so for the most part I've got my coping mechanisms down.
But recently I've really started losing my hearing. APD and hearing loss are different beasts. With APD I can't necessarily understand what people are saying, but I can hear them. Drop me in the woods and I can tell you where the snake is moving through the brush or where the deer is walking. Put me in a restaurant and I won't be able to tell you what the person across the table is saying unless you let me lip-read.
The recent hearing loss has come on as a nasty ringing in my ears, sensitivity to high frequency sound, and an overall loss at other frequencies. It has thrown me for a loop because so much of how I understand human speech right now depends on those frequencies, and my ability to perceive speech is already limited at best.
It may not be permanent, though. I recently injured my lower back and was put on high doses of ibuprofen as an anti-inflamatory. Turns out ibuprofen is ototoxic, and can cause all of the recent symptoms I've been experiencing. The loss is usually reversible, given time. So I'm going off the ibuprofen and trying to limit my exposure to screamingly loud sounds. Only time will tell at this point.
The real bummer isn't that I can't understand other people. That's always been there. It just got worse. The real bummer is that I can't listen to music any more. It's painful. My MP3 player is put away until I recover, and the stereo at home has been left off for days. It sucks. This had better not be permanent.
But recently I've really started losing my hearing. APD and hearing loss are different beasts. With APD I can't necessarily understand what people are saying, but I can hear them. Drop me in the woods and I can tell you where the snake is moving through the brush or where the deer is walking. Put me in a restaurant and I won't be able to tell you what the person across the table is saying unless you let me lip-read.
The recent hearing loss has come on as a nasty ringing in my ears, sensitivity to high frequency sound, and an overall loss at other frequencies. It has thrown me for a loop because so much of how I understand human speech right now depends on those frequencies, and my ability to perceive speech is already limited at best.
It may not be permanent, though. I recently injured my lower back and was put on high doses of ibuprofen as an anti-inflamatory. Turns out ibuprofen is ototoxic, and can cause all of the recent symptoms I've been experiencing. The loss is usually reversible, given time. So I'm going off the ibuprofen and trying to limit my exposure to screamingly loud sounds. Only time will tell at this point.
The real bummer isn't that I can't understand other people. That's always been there. It just got worse. The real bummer is that I can't listen to music any more. It's painful. My MP3 player is put away until I recover, and the stereo at home has been left off for days. It sucks. This had better not be permanent.
posted by pencil at 4:26 PM
1 Comments:
Scary, pencil, very scary. I have the "can't understand conversation in the restaurant but can hear the barely audible songs on their speakers" disorder, whatever that is. So I can extrapolate.
Good luck.
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