My Hearing Test

First off I don't have the graph to share with you but I thought it'd be interesting to share my experience/results.

So as you can see from the sidebar I've had T since 10/20/17. Unknown really what the cause was. I have doubts it is noise related as I do not listen to things at high volume(mostly listen to podcasts, talk radio), and I did not have any kind of loud noise event. That said I had worries that maybe the T started because my hearing was starting to go.

So I go for my hearing test yesterday. First she tests the middle ear, which requires her literally jamming this wand deep into your ear canal. She's an audiologist so I trust she knows what she's doing but at the time I couldn't help think, "Jesus, is she gonna smash my eardrum?". While the wand-thing is inserted she plays a few different tones. They weren't super loud but I would think anyone with not only T but also H would not enjoy it at all! So if you have H and you are going for a hearing test, keep this part of the test in mind and let your doctor know. Anyways, as bad as that seemed everything was fine with my middle ear in both ears.

Then came the usual part where they put the headphones on and play tones in both ears, first a bunch on the left and then the right(my T side). After that she does the same thing except this time she plays a voice saying words which I have to repeat back. Some were a bit hard to make out but I seemed to do good there also.

Afterwards she went over my results and......... I have normal hearing! The only thing she noted was that once it gets to 2k it starts to curve down a bit and into the higher frequencies so that could be a sign I'll have trouble hearing higher frequencies later in life. Otherwise she says my hearing is fine and, surprisingly, the right ear, my T ear, actually has slightly better hearing than my left.

I asked her if she could determine if my T was noise induced at all. While I didn't ask her specifically how familiar she is with T I got the sense she knew something about it at least, but enough digressing. She replied by stating if it was noise induced she thought it was odd I only had it in the one ear. I myself don't see how you couldn't have it only in one ear, but anyways. She pointed to my graph again and noted the steady curve after 2k. She stated she's had people who had damage from gun shot noise and rather than a steady curve the graph would drop sharply at one point and then go back up sharply, so there'd be a valley on the chart basically. Since I don't have anything like that she doesn't lean in the direction of noise induced. She said since I had fluid in my ears when it started it's likely that's what caused my T initially and now it's just stuck around because I keep noticing it. She then went on to basically tell me about habituating to it, playing noise or whatever in the background that's slightly lower than the T sound. I tend to agree with her at this point because during Thanksgiving weekend my T was almost gone entirely but now it's back to being more persistent. It probably doesn't help that I have a habit of checking it. Almost like when you pick at a scab, I would hold my ear closed to see how loud it is. I've stopped doing that as of yesterday as I wasn't even thinking about it (slaps forehead).

Anyways, I'm really glad to hear(lol) that my hearing is fine. She still recommended that I protect myself when going to movies and such, which I finally plan to do this weekend. Oh, I forgot, she also did a bone conduction test, which is basically the same thing as the tones-through-the-headphones test except she puts this device on your skull. It was weirdly cool to hear the same tones just fine, but through my skull.... lol Anyways, that's that. I guess I'll be working on ignoring the noise like I felt I was before and doing more to limit my exposure to super quiet areas, like when I'm at home alone.