i apologize for the letters. the guy couldn’t print it so he had me take a picture and i gave my mom the other physical copy.
my partner and their parent took me to costco yesterday to get a free test to determine whether or not it was worth making an ENT appointment and here are my results. i had quite a breakdown after told it would be best to get hearing aids and make an ENT appointment to find out if this will get worse over time. i told my grandparents first about the test and they are very worried but my mom kept telling me this isn’t serious and she’ll talk to the ENT she works with (she works in the office of the outpatient center) but that i’m fine and this is probably nothing. i’m scared that this will get worse and my mom will continue to sit there and ignore it. do these results look serious?
Based on the audiograms you have hearing loss that will benefit from hearing aids. As to it getting worse, it depends on what is causing your hearing loss. You definitely need to be examined by an ENT who can examine you and determine the cause. That is the only way you will know.
How old are you?
The “cookie-bite” configuration tends to be from a genetic cause. It has almost certainly been progressive since you were younger, as you were likely born with normal or near-normal hearing if you developed language typically. However, it’s not unusual for this sort of progressive loss to hit a certain point and stabilize. All you can really do is monitor it over time. If you have siblings, they should get tested. You are absolutely looking at hearing aids at this point, and that will be a bit of a journey but also a big help and there are a lot of cool things about hearing aids these days. If your hearing loss DOES continue to progress (which it may not, or it may go a little more and then stop) and you reach a point where hearing aids don’t help, you will become a cochlear implant candidate and that will support your continued hearing.
You mom is maybe trying to be reassuring right now, saying that it isn’t serious. It IS serious to you. But what she probably means is that it is manageable and not deadly and she has faith that you will meet this new challenge successfully. She might also be in a bit of denial if she’s not the one who took you to get tested–parents often feel like they have failed when they miss that their child has hearing loss, even though it is pretty easy to miss. They can feel very guilty.
This is a big deal, but you are also going to be okay. Both of those thigns are true. This isn’t the most common type of hearing loss, but it’s one of the more common types to impact younger people and there are lots of others out there with hearing loss just like this leading happy and successful lives with a bit of technological support. It’s normal to feel all sorts of things at any time when you have to readjust your own sense of who you are. “Person with hearing loss” is a new thing to be if you haven’t really thought of yourself that way before, and it comes with some new skills to develop and new things to learn. It sounds like you’re taking the right steps forward. Six months from now, it won’t be scary anymore.
Very kind and supportive answer, Neville!
hello! thank u so so so much for the super supportive and informative response. it really means a lot as i’ve been very worried about everything lately. i am 19 currently and started noticing my hearing problems a year ago ish but they’ve been getting much worse. my mom does work at the hospital near us so she’s going to talk to the ent she works with on monday about an appointment. i am anxious, of course, but i know i need to get in to see an ENT asap to determine what may be the cause and what may happen going forward. i know this isn’t the end of the world but the thought of losing my ability to hear music and play my instruments terrifies me as thats something that has helped me with my PTSD recovery a lot. i just felt like my world was crashing down around me. but i know i am not alone. my partner has been so supportive as well as my grandparents and cousin and i know my mom will be once we figure things out and we know what we’re working with here. i’ve already looked at purple hearing aids (just something to make myself feel a bit better lol) and it makes me feel good that i am doing all this now instead of too late
I am 77 years young, my hearing loss is a cookie bite hearing loss. I ignored it until i was in my mid 50s. It costed me a lot of my capability to carry on conversations. Please do yourself a huge favor and get hearing aids as soon as possible. And do yourself even more favors and protect yourself from loud noises. My loss has stabilized now for over 5 years. But I keep expecting it to worsen. You are going to need an audiologist that is willing to listen to you and your needs, you are going to need to be able to explain what you are and are not hearing. Be patient with yourself and the audiologist. And most of all you are going to need a positive attitude even when it seems to be impossible. Hearing aids nowadays are great nowadays and even getting better. Please don’t be the type to want to hide your aids, and don’t be embarrassed about having to wear aids. Be proud of yourself you can accomplish what ever you wish and still have a hearing loss. I know many individuals that have had great lives and have hearing loss. I worked for a president if this great country that had hearing loss, my audiologist has hearing loss.
I changed careers and adviced to the top of my field with hearing loss. Be positive and you will accomplish your dreams. But get aids ASAP.
You won’t. There might be challenges–getting hearing aids tuned well for music can take some time and when you’re hearing in a new way you have to train your ear again as a musician. But the hearing aids will probably give you back some sounds in music that you have been missing for a while now, and that will be cool. What do you play? IF your hearing loss progresses lover time and you need an implant, there’s this idea floating around the internet that music sounds horrible through a CI, but that’s not quite true either. A CI requires significant auditory rehab as your brain relearns how to use that signal to hear and speech comes back before music (maybe in part because that is what people focus on during the rehab phase), but music also starts sounding better to many, it just needs a bit more work. There are recordings out there of sound that has been processed by a CI, but that is how that sound sounds to people with normal hearing and NOT how sound sounds to the person with the CI. It’s probably way too early to be worrying about a cochlear implant, but just know that it works really well for many people so IF you end up needing one later you will figure that out too.
Good to have a supportive partner! If and when you can, bring them along to your appointments with the audiologist. It helps to give them a better understanding, too.
@jfgimmbfsbf Everyone is different and there is no way to know what will happen in the future, but my loss is in the same range as yours and I was in the same situation that you are in now about 8 years ago (although I was in my early 40s at the time). Due to the shape of my audiogram I was told that it was likely that my loss is genetic, and I probably had at least some level of loss for most of my life and just didn’t realize it. There was no way to tell for sure when it started and if it was getting worse, so all I could do was get HAs and wait to see what happened. I am happy to say that I have had I think 4 or 5 hearing tests done over the last 8 years and they have all been essentially identical. So while it is possible that your hearing may be declining, it is also possible that your loss is stable and may stay there for a while. I also believe that now that you know you have a hearing loss, it might start to seem worse, but only because you are now conscious of it. For the first 40 years of my life I thought my level of hearing was normal, so when I didn’t hear something I didn’t worry about it, it didn’t occur to me to worry, because I thought it was normal. But once you know, you can sometimes start to stress when you have trouble hearing something and your brain might trick you into thinking it is getting worse.
I, like you I assume, am lucky that I can function without hearing aids. However, I strongly encourage you to get them and wear them. At first you might be freaked out at the sounds you are hearing, but it is just because your brain is not used to those sounds and after a couple of weeks those sounds will not seem as loud anymore. But eventually you will get to the point that you realize how much better you are hearing with them. Although I lived most of my life without them and thought I could hear fine, my family can tell immediately if I am not wearing my HAs for some reason (i.e. getting ready for bed, etc) because they really do help that much. So as much as this seems like really bad news right now, I promise it is not the end of the world. This is just the beginning of being able to hear better.
This site is also a great resource, so don’t hesitate to post here if you have any questions or want opinions of others who know how you are feeling.
i currently play tenor and soprano sax, but i played flute for 7 years and i was learning oboe my senior to freshman year of college but i got very stressed with classes and stopped taking lessons. i know it is definitely too early to even worry about not being able to hear music in the future and i think i am majorly beating myself up for having told myself that i was fine. my hearing has been as bad as it is now just in the past year or so and i really scared myself by saying it was just normal. but everyone has been so supportive and i am glad i’m doing this now
i have definitely stressed myself out a lot. i told my partner i was super stressed because i had been telling myself that everything was normal. its been hard to function, for sure. i get so anxious when talking with classmates or my partner because i miss a majority of what they’re saying. with my classmates i would just nod or say i didn’t know as a vague-enough response because i was too nervous to ask them to repeat, and if AND ONLY IF they’d look at me weird or go “really?” to my response, thats when i would ask them to repeat and i would just say i spaced out. my partner though i will ask 3 or 4 times for them to repeat and it happens in just about every conversation where i can’t read their lips or they aren’t directly facing my ear. it was stressful before i knew the results but now i feel disappointed that i didn’t vouch for myself before.
I definitely agree. I completed my undergraduate degree in music school (classical guitar), and although I don’t have hearing loss induced by noise, I would like to emphasize the importance of hearing protection during loud events, such as concerts.
Simply removing hearing aids is not enough; noise protection is a must.
I have had an audiogram above stable since I was 4 years old, so it is definitely possible to participate in musical activities for a long time.
hello! yes i just recently got loop earplugs which was kind of what lead me to getting tested for hearing loss. i had been looking into them for a while to help with my anxiety as i have PTSD caused by trauma at school and am in college. i wanted to be able to drown out the noise when i get overwhelmed and then i started realizing i wouldn’t be able to hear anyone talk so i made a joke about it to a friend of mine and they urged me to get tested. now here we are, found out i need hearing aids all because of some earplugs (which i did get btw and do like them). i’ll use the loops for jazz band as i only have it twice a week but we have our recital next friday and it would be better to have the extra protection. my mom is going to talk to an ent on monday about getting me an appointment. she did the same for my grandpa and he got one same day so we’ll see since when i called on my own, the appointment would’ve been for late january-early february. so hopefully i can get in this coming week with the ent but i DO have the earplugs for jazz and for any time there is an excess of noise for now!
My ear molds are such that they work great as ear plugs. I go to a concert designed for us old folks here where I live an I set in the far back of the place and lower my aids to -2 or -3 and I hear at a comfortable level.
Are you a veteran? 
i am not haha. i am actually just a 19 year old girl 
@cvkemp, indeed, I plan to get more occluded earmolds for hearing protection (mainly from illegally modified automotive mufflers that are often on city streets recently and can produce up to 120 dB suddenly next to me).
The other cause of getting occluded coupling is rather well-known—to achieve targets in REM without engaging feedback and for greater efficiency of directivity, noise suppression, or Roger system.
Good. It is something as this?
It’s good to know that despite their efficency, a little assurance is advisable, because for example, if they have Noise Reduction Ratio of 16 dB - this means that 110 dB noise become 94 dB - still undesirable.
There’s a bit of trial and error in measuring dB in your meetings and then fitting proper attenuation.
Finally, as @cvkemp said, a proper custom earmold could work as an earplug, but there is a risk of occlusion effect, which could be mitigated by making the earmold long enough to reach the bony part of the ear canal.
I know that feeling. During the first 12 years of my school education, there were many instances of unpleasant harassment, not directly because I am hard of hearing, but because I was a bit different from the established norm, despite the fact that I hadn’t harmed anyone. (It is not strange for someone to be a bit isolated due to deafness from the age of 4 and having only worn a hearing aid since the age of 12, because earlier hearing aids were too poorly fitted and constantly screeched).
I am now 35. Good for you for having supportive friends and a partner! 
I hope to find similar environments as in @RobHooft’s society.
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i know this isn’t the end of the world but the thought of losing my ability to hear music and play my instruments terrifies me
Exactly my own fears. You are not alone Make peace with it and move on with your plan. I lost my hearing at age 32 and am still enjoying all sorts of music at age 69, especially Pink Floyd. Modern hearing aids are loaded with technology and Bluetooth streaming directly into your hearing devices keeps getting better with Auracast upcoming. You will be ok.
I think it’s totally normal to look backwards and think, “Oh wow, maybe this and that thing were aggravated by undiagnosed hearing loss. I could have had support sooner.” But honestly, you are taking action a lot sooner than many people in similar situations. Maybe you can move to feeling proud about taking steps to help yourself and hopeful about how that is going to make things easier in the future.
In Canada, you wouldn’t have to wait on an ENT, you could just go to an audiologist and be fit with hearing aids pretty quickly, though you’d be referred along to an ENT as well. I’m not sure whether the States are different, or whether it’s just because you saw a Hearing Instrument Specialist at Costco who does have to wait on medical clearance.
yeah i’m not sure. we don’t have any audiologists at the city hospital only 2 ENTS and my mom doesn’t believe i need hearing aids and my grandparents are urging me to go because they’re worried i have hearing loss so young like this. i had already planned on making an appointment if at Costco i got the results i did, so now i guess i wait until Monday when my mom can talk to the ENT she works with. she did get my grandpa a same-day appointment so lets hope
Well done. I’m 78. I bought a single hearing aid about 24 years ago. Encourage you to follow your plan.
There are people here with incredible skill. Neville has helped me a lot.
I have hearing loss due to loud noise. My hearing has declined badly in a year. However my care is better now
My story isn’t important unless it helps you
A helpful book I read after reading a review here
HEAR & BEYOND
Live Skillfully with Hearin Loss
Shari Eberts and Gael Hannan