Monday, March 01, 2010

My Left Ear

Last month, I went to an ENT doc to get my ears cleaned. He proceed to check my hearing using a tuning fork. First he put the fork next to my ears. I could hear it in both ears. Then he did Webber test which he put the fork on my front teeth. I could hear it only on my left ear. My doc checked it again to make sure, and I still only heard it on my left. Gasp!

Ok, I've always thought that losing my sight would be such a disaster comparing to losing my hearing, as I am very visual and can do a bit of lips reading. However, at that moment, all I could think of was what did I do to losing my hearing? I dont even use headphone once a week, and if I do I never crank it up loud. Most of the time I get irritated when mom turns the TV out loud, I only turn it up when I want to watch something in the living room but the mosque nearby was louder than our TV. Yes, I have an issue with that mosque and its loudspeaker, but that's another story.

The doc referred me to see an audiologist to get an audiogram to see how severe the problem is. So I went.

She checked my ear canals, then did another tuning fork test both in front of my ears and on the bone near it. After that she did Rinne test where she put this thing on my skull from the front to the back with vibration. The last test she did was using a headphone and I have to press this button each time I hear a beep in different decibels and frequencies. All in about 15 minutes.

There were moments when I felt like hallucinating hearing a beep, since it was so faintly high pitched and sounded far away.

According to the test I have a normal hearing, although a bit less on on left than my right in lower frequency. I even have pretty sensitive hearing in higher frequencies. Probably that's why I could hear this special ringtone for teenager that was designed with high pitch so that people older than 25 years old couldnt hear it.

As for why I failed Webber test, I was told it is probably because my left ear tube was closed due to cold or something like that. That's why the conductivity was skewed, and I only heard it on my left ear.

Now I have to tell S-cough the good news, cause he was worried when I told him I need an audiogram.

2 comments:

colson said...

Your ears obviously are that good that, maybe, if I shout at the top of my voice "Hoe gaat het met je??!!!", you actually do hear me.

triesti said...

Hahahaha.. Het gaat iets beter met mij, bedankt! You know, I think that doc had a point, since I hear less in lower frequency, I might not always hear a whisper from males on my left ear... oh well.