HollyAlonzo – Never Giving Up Hope

I have not lost all hearing in my left ear. But I can tell what nerbe damage the tumor is causing.

It’s not just a hearing loss. The 8th acoustic nerve controls hearing and balance.

It is a weird sound. I do not know if I can describe it correctly. I will try to explain what I hear and how I feel when it happens.

I can be sitting reading a book, or trying to understand someone. It’s not in quiet situations only, or loudness either. It happens in both cases.

My hearing is already muffled, and distorted. But suddenly I heard a sound. My regular hearing doesn’t go out completely, but there is this loud sound. It makes my brain think of a flash of light, except with my ear instead of my eye. It’s very fast. It only sounds once and then goes away.

When I get the sound, I also get dizzy as well. It is a flash sound, and I can tell that it’s never happened before, so it must be the nerve damage.

I think of the nerve like this. You have an electric guitar. That is your ear. The amplifire is your brain. Both of these pieces of equipment can be in good working order, but if the cable connecting them has somethingwrong with it, you will get all kinds of pops and clicks, or no noise at all.

The acoustic nerve is exactly like this. At first your hearing becomes a little less than perfect. When your hearing drops enough, you will start hearing phantom sounds. This is your bodies way of thinking that it can still hear. Once the nerve is damanaged even more, you start losing balance and hearing. The nerve shorts out like a pick up cable for a guitar. That is where I am now.

It is just like the cable connecting my ear to my brain is shorting out and I am getting loud bursts like pops (or a flash). It is very strange to be literally listening to the damange that is being caused and having nothing you can do about it.
Maybe one day, stem cell research will be able to help people with auditory nerve damage. We can hope.