r/HearingLoss

At 41 years old, I've been hard of hearing in both ears my whole life. As a kid in the 90s I had the hearing aids that wrapped behind the ear. It was hot, itchy, and screamed in my ear all the time and couldn't stand wearing them. As a teen, I had a more inconspicuous model that just rested in the ear canal, same problem. They just physically made my skin crawl.

But what was also unbearable to me was just how LOUD everything was. I swear I couldn't hear voices any better because every single background noise was also amplified into white noise that drowned out speech. So hot, itchy, wax-sticky, and ineffectual was my experience back then. Is that still the case now? Did it just take a while to train yourself to actually tolerate them? My hearing is just getting worse in my middle age and I'm tired of irritating the $&#^ of of my friends, family, and coworkers asking them to repeat themselves all the time.

This community helped me through what I believe has been one of the hardest times of my life so far, so I want to give back by sharing my story.

I’m a 33-year-old male, fairly active and healthy. Last week, I woke up completely deaf in my left ear, with constant tinnitus. In the days prior to this, I only had a mild cold, so it could be related.

After a few hours passed and my hearing didn’t return, I started googling and found this sub. I read a lot of stories, and that same day—about 12 hours after onset—I took my first dose of methylprednisolone (80 mg).

I managed to see an ENT the next day, and he confirmed it is indeed SSNHL. He prescribed the proper steroid course (5 days at 80 mg, 5 days at 40 mg, 5 days at 20 mg, and 5 days at 10 mg) and asked how I knew that was the correct treatment, so I referred to this sub.

This past week has been a nightmare: trouble sleeping, extreme anxiety, and an overwhelming fear of what my life might be like from now on.

Today marks 7 days since onset, and my ear feels the same. I don’t know if I should push for intratympanic injections—the doctor didn’t seem to consider them until 14 days have passed without improvement from oral steroids.

My next appointment is in one week. I’ll update once I’m back.

Thank you for reading. I hope we all get better. Any comment is welcome—I haven’t felt this lonely in a long time.

For reference, I have hearing loss in my left ear and wear hearing aids. I also have an auditory processing disorder. I was diagnosed with both about 10 months ago.

I still have a very hard time when understanding what people say, even when I can hear the words come out of their mouths. But also, when I am speaking in a group of people, I've just given up trying to talk, because half of the time I have only actually heard and understood bits and pieces of the conversation, and I don't want to say something that didn't even make sense with what we were all talking about.

I feel bad for my partner having to live with this. I know it's frustrating, having to repeat things over and over....it's frustrating for me too. It's making me depressed.

I mean realistically when do you guys think there will be a cure? Near future, far future?? Is there a cure & they’re hiding it from us 😩 i really wish there was something to reverse these effects.. you never truly appreciate what you have until it’s gone 😢

Being deaf is not for the weak for sure, but given the circumstances I'm not so strong to begin with. Deep rooted issue with being deaf since birth is having difficulties with developing properly, I've grown ashamed and silent, because people are always irritated when someone doesn't hear them. Society just fences me off, since im incompatible with people who hear well and couldn't bother themselves with caring.

It's dreadful, truly, and my words aren't enough to explain how painful it is to live a life you cannot experience fully.

I don't have anyone to talk to except my family, but even they are busy with raising a younger child. They don't have the energy to try and understand me, so i have to leave them alone.

Each time I interact socially, i feel how much impact this disability left on me throughout my life. Even so, after putting much effort into interhuman relationships it all ends in a very similar way - the person understands that it's too difficult for them and leaves me. Tomorrow I'm planning to meet a person I'm not comfortable with, nor want to spend time with, but I talk to them because they're as desperate as me.

so I have middle ear hearing loss and from what I understand is middle ear hearing loss is mostly responsible for hearing speech properly. does this mean that I can hear sounds like music normally but just cant hear the words in the lyrics correctly ?

For those who use hearing aids full time in order to function with their hearing loss/deafness, and work from home. Please help. Do you connect your hearing aids to your work computer or do you have an accommodation to use your personal computer? My hearing aids require repairing to new device every time it’s switched from one to another which takes reconfiguring. So, if I pair to my personal computer for example and then go to a family members house and wanted to switch to theirs, I would never go through the hassle. So, up until now I have the accommodation to use my personal computer to work with my own device (everyone works from home - that part is not an accommodation). The accommodation is my own device. This way I don’t have to constantly pair and unpair all day if I need to use my personal cell phone to… hear. I just received a note from Hr saying they’d like to move me to a work device. I am so stressed out at how this is going to work. Please share details if you have a similar scenario.

Sharing an update on efforts to introduce a statewide open movie caption bill in New York State. NYC already has a law, but this would expand it statewide.

HLAA-NYS has been in contact with the legislature and was told in March that multiple Senators had expressed interest in sponsoring the 2026 bill, and that a lead sponsor would likely be determined soon probably before the end of March.

The message below is from Jerry Bergman, Director of the Advocacy Committee for the Hearing Loss Association of New York State:

Friends,

For over three months and counting, the New York State Legislature has failed to assign a lead Senate  sponsor to the Open Movie Caption Bill.  It’s pretty outrageous that cinema chains are allowed to continue to discriminate against deaf and hard of hearing moviegoers by making them obtain closed caption devices when they could easily and at no cost provide a few open captioned movie showtimes.

But here’s a bit of good news:  On April 6, Virginia Governor Spanberger signed OCAP bill HB 602 into law, to take effect on July 1 and make Virginia the 6th jurisdiction — following Hawaii, Maryland, the District of Columbia, Washington State and New York City — to require cinemas to give equal treatment to deaf and hard of hearing people.

If you live in New York State and care about this failure of our lawmakers to do the right thing, please call and write to your elected state senator and demand that the legislature act.

Jerry Bergman,

Director, Advocacy Committee

Hearing Loss Association of New York State