I have been deaf my entire life, so it is hard for me to truly appreciate what people who experience sudden deafness must go through.
Sudden Deafness - Rare
There is very little on the internet about sudden hearing loss, in part because it is relatively rare. People can have normal hearing their entire lives, then wake up deaf. Others can have mild hearing impairment, then suddenly lose all the rest of their hearing.
Resources on Sudden Deafness
The best page on sudden hearing loss is the UTMB page, a long page that discusses diagnosis, frequency, etiology, prognosis, and treatment. It also provides a lengthy bibliography. A shorter explanation is available from the Grand Rounds archives.
Few personal pages describe experience with sudden hearing loss. One parent described her son's experience with sudden loss from Mondini Syndrome.
Still more information on sudden deafness is available through a PubMed search.
An About Deafness/HOH visitor wrote:
"I was born hearing, but was deliberately exposed to the GermanMeasles at the age of 4 by my mother (who believed it was a harmlesschildhood diseases.) For the duration of the hi (107) fever, I wascompletely deaf. When the fever broke, I got back MOST of my hearing. But the hearing has deteriorated slowly as I have aged (I am now 51).
I got a cochlear implant a year ago. It is NOT working well for me. I cannot distinguish between sounds I hear through it. But my real reason for writing, is that this past summer, I experienced sudden adult onset deafness. I woke up one morning with a really loud hum in my good (unimplanted) ear, AND COMPLETE DEAFNESS. This lasted for 3 days. As a teacher of the deaf, I knew this had happened to many late-deafened adults. They always told me that the cause was never found.
I called the doctor who had implanted me, and he started me on aregimen of steroids. Within a week, my hearing returned. Everyone knows the story of Rush Limbaugh. What they DON'T know, is that when this kind of thing strikes them, THERE ARE TREATMENTS TO DEAL WITH THIS. If this sort of thing is caught early enough, it can be stopped, even reversed.
Why isn't this information out there? Why do I continue to meeteducated adults who tell me the same story of their sudden onsetdeafness? I think that medicine is NOT doing enough to spread the wordabout steroid treatments for sudden onset deafness. Everyone knows howto prevent the spread of aids, how to do monthly breastself-examinations, and how to avoid sun-damage to your skin. But whyisn't the word out there about the symptoms of, and the ticking-timeclock of sudden onset deafness? As a 24-year veteran teacher of thedeaf, I can only impact a very few people with this story."
