And then there was the ENT...

Hey all,

Today I had an appointment with my ENT. I have been officially diagnosed with a rapidly progressive sensorineural hearing loss, I knew this already but a doctor has said it now. He doesn't know why though. He offered to put me on a week long course of high dose steroids but I decided not too. The risks aren't worth the incredibly minute chance that I will recover any of my hearing. If it were to work too it probably wouldn't be a noticable change for me anyway. And really, do I care if I can kinda, sorta, barely hear 2000hz at 120 db? I don't think so personally. I saw an audiologist at the hospital too. She did another audiogram (I am getting sick of those) and pretty much the same as my last one. I didn't respond to 2000 or higher in either ear, and the lower frequencies were all in the 90-120 range. I had one frequency, I think it was 250hz. in my right ear at 85 which was a bit better than my last test.

The audiologist was bad though. She made me take off my glasses and without my glasses I can't see to speech read. She kept trying to talk to me and I kept telling her I couldn't understand her without my glasses, so what did she do? She wrote me a note. If I can't see well enough to speech read, how can she expect me to read a note? Anyway that was frustrating. Then after the testing she tried to tell me that my loss was in the severe range because I tested at 85db on the one frequency. She couldn't even do a speech discrim test, and my SRT was 95. With all of that she argued that it wasn't a profound loss. And with the bone conducted test she told me to tell her if I could feel it, or if I could hear it. So I pressed the button when I could feel it, but I never heard anything. She then tried to tell me that feeling it was the same thing as hearing it. Which it clearly isn't. I know the difference and my audiologist lets me ignor it when I can feel it and tell her when I can hear it. I tried to tell this other audiologist that I could tell the difference but she was insistant that I couldn't. So I argued with her enough that she finally write Vib beside all of the <'s and >'s so that my audiologist and the doctors would know that I couldn't actually hear it but I felt it. Anyway that was my day...

After all of that I went straight to my audiologists office. No appointment or anything just to give her a copy of the audiogram from the hospital. She wanted to talk to me while I was there and she went over the audiogram with me, and talk a bit more about the Naidas, which I get on Monday. We just went over stuff, no new info really but now she is up to date and can use todays audiogram to program the Naidas on Monday.

The ENT wants me to go back at the end of April for another test. He wants to do a BAER test on me. I don't know if I want to go do more testing. I don't think it will change anything. I have dealt with a lot of medical problems through out my life and I have stumped many doctors who just want to find out why something is happening. The answer to why doesn't change anything, they just want to know. I have already been told that there is no 'why' so far, and if they find one it won't change anything so personally, right now, I don't see the point of this test. I have always had a progressive sensorineural hearing loss, this isn't something new. It just progressed a bit faster in recent months. I am just sick of doctors and want to focus on school and things that are more important to me right now. I know my hearing should be important but it's not going to come back so why should I still be worrying about it? I would rather invest my time in trying to work with the new aids, and speech therapy, and things that can be worked on. Not doing more tests to find out nothing that will help. That's just the way I am...anyway that is enough for tonight!

-Jenny