I Can't Hear?!?!

[GILFOIL]

i woke up yesterday morning and discovered hearing in my right ear had been significantly reduced. naturally, i started flipping out! OMG! WTF AM I TO DO.

so i went to work and told them the situation (my job involved extended periods of time on the phone). they sent me off telling me to look into it ASAP.

conveniently, theres a hearing center in the same building, which was unconveniently closed at the time i start work. so i head down to the nearest walk-in clinic, which turns out also to be closed. so with no other option, i went to a friends and tried to watch movies with one ear. how frusterating.

either way, as it turns out, when i went back to the clinic today and saw the doc, after he had a look, turns out it was some kind of wax build up, apparently caused some type of extended stress on the ear, possibly caused by A. use of one ear for too long (long phone use) or strain from long periods of critical listening. anyway, he flushed it out with some hot water, and after about the 3 or 4th shot, WOW!

i could sudden hear things that i forgot made noise! what a difference! i was tempted to ask him to do the left ear aswell, but there was a pregnant girl next in the waiting room so i didnt want to be too long.

anyway, just wondering if anyone has experienced this... and if so, i strongly recommend getting them flushed. it's somewhat discomforting, but relativly painless. and works amazingly.

as far as my "moan" for this zone goes, i checked the most recent late night mix i did, and not at all to my surprise, the right side was much louder than the left, and i had things panned that shouldn't have been. DAMMIT
time to remix!

so next is a hearing test to determine whether i should do the same with the left ear.
but seriously.
PHEW!
i thought i was going def!
thanks for listening.

~GILF!

[Jay-]

I have clogged Tympanostomy Tubes in one ear.
It SUCKS. Some times its not quite pain but its totally annoying!
I got mine from a 8 month visit to Houston, the air was very very bad and my ear never went normal.

From what Im told is back in the "old west times" where no smog or dust in the atmosphere your lungs could correctly clean out the toxins with nasal mucus.
In NOW DAYS of killer smog and what ever.. you cant keep up!

I got a shot and a proper diagnosis and it was heaven! I could use both ears.
Was like I took an airplane and my ear popped. Imagine that but one ear never popped? Imagine that for 5 years????? Its like an itch you cant get to!

I got a shot of a steroid and some how it expanded the Tympanostomy Tubes and allowed the fluid to drain. What happens is it becomes inflamed from toxins and then pools behind the ear and then gets nasty infections and its a chain of disorder.

They wanted to put a hole in my ear and I was HELL NO, no way.,. huh uh.. screw that... So the fluid would drain out. No way....

Well their was a brush fire last night and my ear is hosed and my roommates ear is hosed.

Well taths life I guess.

I was told they have a natural cure where you shoot a solution down your nose and the germs are attracted to it and goes to the solution out of your ear but itwas expensive and I thought, SNAKE OIL! and becides I have not changed my dirty living environment yet so why bother..

I have a 20% hearing loss in one ear yeah!!!! and its pretty bad today after that brush fire next door.

I wonder if they have a cure and I also found a house 40 miles in the country so no smog!

[olivia_nb]

Originally Posted by Jay-

I was told they have a natural cure where you shoot a solution down your nose and the germs are attracted to it and goes to the solution out of your ear but itwas expensive and I thought, SNAKE OIL!

yeah, good observation, that actually sounds a little dangerous going from nose to ear with fluid... I use a neti pot Nasal irrigation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia almost everyday and it works wonderfully for my sinuses and its been keeping my ears very clean as well. I have seen an ENT twice to get my ears cleaned and he pulled out so much wax the first time (totally gross) that even my unplugged ear got a noticeably high frequency response I didn't realize I was missing! He said I was a candidate for a once a year cleaning, but with the neti pot I'm not getting build up like I used to.

[ggegan]

High SPLs cause your ears to form wax in an attempt to counteract the assault they are experiencing.

In the popular music and much of motion picture sound industry, high SPLs are inevitable, so you will inevitably experience hearing loss if you stay in the business long enough. I know many middle age film mixers who have chronic tinitus and a big hole in the high mid range and a roll off on everything over 6kHz. The same is true of many music engineers, probably even worse. They also have trouble understanding people talking when there is any background noise. This is a consequence of permanent hearing damage resulting from constant exposure to high SPLs.

When you hear other people's mixes with tons of high end it is probably not because it is an aesthetic choice, but more likely because they are compensating for the fact that they can no longer hear high frequencies with the same sensitivity as those whose ears are still undamaged so they crank up the high end.

If you stay in this business long enough, you will get permanent hearing damage. How much depends on you and the projects you work on.

If it is any consolation, many of the kids who buy the majority of music these days also have permanent hearing damage because they constantly listen to distorted music at high SPLs through their iPod ear plugs, which probably cause more damage to their ears than your screaming monitors cause to yours. You are probably pretty much in sync in terms of the degradation of your hearing, but eventually you'll both be severely disabled.

Check out The House Ear Institute Welcome to the House Ear Institute

[KeMiKaL]

this has happened to me... I remember I was in the middle of a recording session, and all of a sudden my right ear rings for like 3 seconds, and then just goes out.

I freaked out and Marco [the artist] was looking at me like "What The Hell Happened"

"Dude, i think I just went deaf in my right ear... **** it Do the second verse again"

lol

it came back 2 days later, kinda weird

[steveschizoid]

Originally Posted by ggegan

If you stay in this business long enough, you will get permanent hearing damage.

This is not neccessarily true. Buy musician's ear plugs for concerts. Use cheap ear plugs for protection against more mundane assaults - lawnmowers and circular saws. Use a decibel meter when you sit down to mix. Read Bob Katz's book "Mastering Audio"; there are a couple of very good reasons why you should never mix/master above 85 Db. I am a little fuzzy on the physics and biology, but as the SPL increases past 85 Db the frequency response of the ear changes - you hear more bass. So, if you mix too loud, you'll end up with bass light mixes, and you will eventually damage your ears. Decibel meters are cheap at radio shack.