Worried Sick About Hearing Damage

I've had anxiety issues my whole life and it only recently occurred to me that I have pulsatile tinnitus.

I have memories of being very young standing in the bathroom and hearing a strange "pumping" sound in my ears. It's not something I really paid any attention to for most of my life up until recently where it's worried me to the point of getting an audiogram done, and everything was appeared average. I've been taking Zoloft for 13 years now, if that has anything to do with it.

I've read online about non-traditional forms of hearing damage and it has had me worried for so long now I just want to know if there's any way of determining whether my hearing is fine or not.

I'm so anxious about it I think my hearing's fine for the whole day then I'll mishear a word and go back to thinking there's damage. I don't know if the tinnitus drowns out sound, if I have a hearing loss, or if I'm just too worried about nothing

So my question is: Are there any means of determining whether there's some sort of hearing loss undetectable by an normal audiogram?

Thank you.

 

Hi @okokok

I did a normal audiogram up to 8000hz and my hearing was within normal range (up to 20dB loss), the audiologist said my hearing was fine, but I knew it wasn't and I could tell I'd lost hearing. I went to a different audiologist and did an ultra high frequency hearing test up to 16000hz I have a 60-65dB hearing loss at 12000hz. My tinnitus pitch was measured at 12500hz so it corresponds with my hearing loss. So this just goes to show that a standard audiogram is very limited when assessing hearing loss and tinnitus.

Maybe you could do an ultra high frequency hearing test?

I hope this helps.

 

Hi @okokok you can even do the audiogram up to 20kHz, I've done that. Similarly to you my hearing is normal up to 8kHz (some -20dB loss) and even ok up to 16kHz, but between 16-20kHz there is a gradual loss going down to -65dB at 20kHz. However this may or may not be the reason for your T, as we grow older it's normal to have a loss in the higher frequencies, but obviously not all the people develop T due to that.

 

There's no way to prove "no damage", only ways to prove "damage", so the only possible outcomes of testing is "maybe there is damage" or "there is damage for sure".
How is the outcome of the test going to affect you, if the result is the latter vs the former. Are you going to do things differently?