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I saw an audiologist this morning, as my GP recommended after finding that my eardrum was healed.
He took a look at the eardrum himself, and then cheerfully told me that it was indeed healed, "look at it." There was my eardrum on a large screen, looking perfectly all right to my untrained eye. He looked at the other ear, and showed me that it, too, was looking just fine.
He asked me a few questions, including whether I had relatives who had hearing problems; I mentioned my mother's age-related hearing loss and what she does for it, but couldn't remember when it had started. I also told him about all the years spent commuting by subway (my largest noise exposure). I also asked him about her advice to use swimmers' earplugs while washing my hair, and he said I can stop doing that, which will save some trouble. (I may yet err on the side of caution and do it that way a bit longer, since I still have ten of the earplugs, and no expectation of using them while swimming.)
Then we went down the hall, and did the actual hearing measurements. I sat inside a small and I assume soundproofed room, and he sat on the other side of a closed door. Despite what I'd been told, this part of the appointment was uncomfortable: it probably wouldn't be for most people, but I have small ears, and the devices he put in them were too big to be comfortable for me. (I was annoyed but not surprised: I can't use any of those in-ear earphones for the same reason.)
The test included both pressing a button whenever I heard any sort of tone, and repeating words back to him to see how well I could distinguish them. We did each ear separately, then he took the microphone/earplug combo things out, fitted a device for bone conduction, and I listened for tones that way. (I already don't remember whether this part included the words or just the tones.)
To my pleasant surprise, there is nothing wrong with my hearing. The audiologist showed me a pair of charts, one for each ear, showing how well I hear at different frequencies. My hearing is better at some frequencies than others, but falls within the "normal" range for all of them. He seemed particularly pleased that the bone conduction results are close to the results for sending the sounds into my ear.
I had been expecting a result along the lines of "the eardrum is fine, but you have some accumulated hearing loss, here's what we should do about it" if not "and the right ear is worse, which might be because of the punctured eardrum." What I got was "you haven't inherited your mother's hearing, and don't worry about the subway, if it didn't cause damage at the time it's not going to*." So that is a relief, though I walked in there figuring that if I did need hearing aids, at least they make pretty good ones nowadays. On the other hand, I guess I will have to keep asking people to repeat themselves occasionally in noisy places; that's not something we tested for. (If I'd thought of it three hours ago, I might have asked him if there was any way to check on hearing when there's a lot of background noise, but I really don't want another medical/health thing to need to keep track of. Needing people to repeat themselves is one of the things I mentioned on their multi-page intake questionnaire, though.)
*that's not a promise that more subway-riding would be safe, necessarily, but that there's no lurking damage that I will notice later.
He took a look at the eardrum himself, and then cheerfully told me that it was indeed healed, "look at it." There was my eardrum on a large screen, looking perfectly all right to my untrained eye. He looked at the other ear, and showed me that it, too, was looking just fine.
He asked me a few questions, including whether I had relatives who had hearing problems; I mentioned my mother's age-related hearing loss and what she does for it, but couldn't remember when it had started. I also told him about all the years spent commuting by subway (my largest noise exposure). I also asked him about her advice to use swimmers' earplugs while washing my hair, and he said I can stop doing that, which will save some trouble. (I may yet err on the side of caution and do it that way a bit longer, since I still have ten of the earplugs, and no expectation of using them while swimming.)
Then we went down the hall, and did the actual hearing measurements. I sat inside a small and I assume soundproofed room, and he sat on the other side of a closed door. Despite what I'd been told, this part of the appointment was uncomfortable: it probably wouldn't be for most people, but I have small ears, and the devices he put in them were too big to be comfortable for me. (I was annoyed but not surprised: I can't use any of those in-ear earphones for the same reason.)
The test included both pressing a button whenever I heard any sort of tone, and repeating words back to him to see how well I could distinguish them. We did each ear separately, then he took the microphone/earplug combo things out, fitted a device for bone conduction, and I listened for tones that way. (I already don't remember whether this part included the words or just the tones.)
To my pleasant surprise, there is nothing wrong with my hearing. The audiologist showed me a pair of charts, one for each ear, showing how well I hear at different frequencies. My hearing is better at some frequencies than others, but falls within the "normal" range for all of them. He seemed particularly pleased that the bone conduction results are close to the results for sending the sounds into my ear.
I had been expecting a result along the lines of "the eardrum is fine, but you have some accumulated hearing loss, here's what we should do about it" if not "and the right ear is worse, which might be because of the punctured eardrum." What I got was "you haven't inherited your mother's hearing, and don't worry about the subway, if it didn't cause damage at the time it's not going to*." So that is a relief, though I walked in there figuring that if I did need hearing aids, at least they make pretty good ones nowadays. On the other hand, I guess I will have to keep asking people to repeat themselves occasionally in noisy places; that's not something we tested for. (If I'd thought of it three hours ago, I might have asked him if there was any way to check on hearing when there's a lot of background noise, but I really don't want another medical/health thing to need to keep track of. Needing people to repeat themselves is one of the things I mentioned on their multi-page intake questionnaire, though.)
*that's not a promise that more subway-riding would be safe, necessarily, but that there's no lurking damage that I will notice later.
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So if you'd inherited your mother's hearing, the doc would be able to tell? Would you be showing more loss by now, then? My relations haven't had any hearing problems that I know of, so this is all very interesting and new.