This past Monday, I showed my neuro my new hearing aide. He was surprised and said you never told me you had a loss!!! (Whoops!)

Anyway he went on to say that there is a new study? or article? or something that is saying that hearing loss can be the FIRST symptom of MS. Which in my case would be true.

So, I'm really curious how many of us have permanent or had temporary hearing losses.....

This is a anonymous poll.

I checked "permanent loss in one ear before MS symptoms," but actually the hearing loss occurred a few weeks after what I consider the first of all those weird symptoms (painful electric shocks under my ears in mid-1999).

The vast majority of the weird symptoms began a couple months after the hearing loss that year.

I did have some dizzy episodes, stabbing head pains, achiness, and constant wooziness going back to the late 1980s, but I don't know if those are related to all the other stuff. I never thought anything about those old longtime symptoms until 1999 when I lost my hearing and then all the other stuff happened.

So, my hearing loss was really one of the first two BIG weird/unexplained things that happened to me.

Haven't ever been diagnosed with anything, though.

Nancy T.

I had hearing loss but didn't realize it until after my last round of steroids. The hearing has been fine since then. I don't know when I lost it though.

I've had tinnitus in both ears since I was a small child. I've had it as long as I can remember. The worst it's been, was when I had mononucleosis and my tonsils had swollen so big that I was in danger of having breathing difficulties.

The tonsils (which are naturally the size of golf balls. My doctor freaks whenever I get a sore throat and visit him for meds) had swollen up so badly and were really infected. The infection made it's way into my ears so I couldnt hear for about 3 weeks to a month. I couldnt talk because of all the swelling in my throat, and my nose was so plugged up it was (eww!) constantly dripping some sort of brown foul nastiness, which was fairly constant the entire time I was sick.

The only thing I could hear was this loud roaring noise, like sitting next to a giant concert speaker that was transmitting static, or it kind of sounded like the ocean, only really really loud. Drowned out everything.

Ironically, I'd dropped out of my ASL (American Sign Language) class because of the mono. My parents didnt know sign, so I had to use a notebook to communicate with them for part of the time. My mom kept ticking me off because I couldnt hear her very well, and I certainly couldnt respond back to her vocally...she'd constantly ask me questions that I couldnt answer back because I couldnt talk. Drove me bananas.

Since the mono, every once in awhile, my ears will feel like they're popping, and I'll have muffled hearing for anywhere from a few minutes to an hour after my ears "pop" or whatever it is that they're doing when that happens.

Had total hearing loss in left ear some years ago - went to ear MD and he said I was stone deaf and that I'd never hear again - hearing came back along with tinnitus and there are many soft sounds and tones I can't hear - hearing aids are a problem with my glasses as I get constant feedback - being in groups of people is horrible as then I can't understand anything - neuro said deafness was probably caused by mylogram - that an air bubble had lodged in my ear - don't know - just was glad what came back - did !!

Wow! I had the same thing happen to me! Until I was dx'd I never thought about the hearing loss as something to do with MS.

Everything was fine then all of a sudden my left ear popped, no pain, nothing. I lost all hearing in that ear. Dr. sent me to an ear specialist and he said I'd never hear again and the only thing he could explain was that I must have had some sort of bubble that caused it.

It was about 4 or 5 months when all of a sudden I was in Krogers and BAM! I could hear out of my left ear again. LOL left groceries and all and went straight to specialist...he still couldn't really explain what happened.

I have trouble with crowds or a lot of different sounds at one time, plus constant "static" sound in that ear (I joke that maybe sometime the static will clear and I'll tune into a good radio station lol) Right ear is fine, no problems at all with it.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15732838

here is the article that my doctor found!

So I misunderstood what he said. This was one case. But he believes I may be also have had this for a first sx....

Thanks, Bird.

Hi Tante, thanks for the further info on your situation. What a bummer to have so much hearing loss.

So it really does sound like it's likely connected with your other symptoms and not a hereditary thing. (Don't you hate those off-the-wall, completely unsubstantiated diagnoses!!) I hope you don't have any further loss of your hearing. It must be frustrating to have this and not know the exact cause.

I feel very lucky that I only had the one-time loss and nothing since (in 9 years). I recently found out that my insurance WILL pay for a Baha (bone-anchored hearing prosthetic for single-sided deafness), so I'm really excited about that! (My speech discrimination in my bad ear is so bad that a conventional hearing aid won't help.)

My ABR was very abnormal on both sides but my right-side hearing remains perfect, thankfully.

Good luck to everyone suffering from hearing loss. It may be considered uncommon in MS, but uncommon doesn't mean nobody gets it! (Mine hasn't been attributed to anything definitively--most likely a vascular trauma from sneezing hard.)

Nancy T.

Nancy T, my thanks go to BIRD for this whole thread , and to you for bringing up some interesting ideas.

I am going to look for an ENT, once I have had a little Dr. free time, and make doubly certain that an implant won't work for me, and that there is nothing else, new, that might.

I also want to investigate any effects my trigeminal neuropathy might be having...and what might help there. So, as I said, my thanks to you.

Quote:

I feel very lucky that I only had the one-time loss and nothing since (in 9 years). I recently found out that my insurance WILL pay for a Baha (bone-anchored hearing prosthetic for single-sided deafness), so I'm really excited about that! (My speech discrimination in my bad ear is so bad that a conventional hearing aid won't help.)

Hey, that is wonderful!! Will you be able to get it soon?
I can really appreciate what you are saying...so many people think if they just yell louder one will "hear" it, but speech discrimination, which I think is probably what I've referred to as word processing, is a different issue.

Would you mind keeping us updated on your BAHA? I'm going to look it up now, see what you're getting yourself into.