I just went to see an ENT. He said that i had 80 db loss in one ear and 37db in the other. Speech recognition in the left is 25%@100db and the right is 70%@80db. I am completely devistated right now. He gave me a shot of steriods in the left ear yesterday and then i am on steriod pills for the next 6 days. Has anyone had any success with this? My hearing loss is due to noise exposure. He also mentioned a BICROS hearing aid. I read about that on the web but i have no idea what it looks like. i dont want a wire running from ear to ear, and i also dont want something that looks unusual. Is this thing like a BTE or is there extra stuff hanging from it? Would wearing just a hearing aid in the better ear be an option (keeping the left ear unaided)? I find that i can hear fine one-on-one but i am having great difficulty in background noise. I feel as if my life and my opportunities are limited now. I honestly dont know what to do. I am a total wreck this weekend. Please, any information about the success of steriods or BiCros would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

I don't know anything abut the BC aid, but you shouldn't worry so much - there are so many aids to choose from these days, and an audiologist will be able to point you in the right direction. I've worn aids since I was 5 (I am 24 now). Until about 3 years ago I wore outer ear aids (ie the aid hangs over the ears). The problem with these was that they may squeal quite a bit, and they don't realy exclude noise. Then I was fortunate enough to get inner ear aids, that actuall fit inside the ear canal. These are the best, and if your medical aid can afford it, you ought to invest in them. I now have no problem in conversations (like you I managed one on one, but in a crowd was hopeless). Now I can hold my own in a group, and in fact few people know that I wear them. But they are very expensive. The point is that you have many shapes and sizes and styles to choose from these days. The aid you describe sounds hideous! And so unnecessary. Do yourself a favour and explore the variety of options that exist these days. But whatever you do, GET THE AIDS!! Your life WILL be transformed. I can vouch for that.

Thanks for responding so quickly. I honestly dont know what is going to happen. I would like other options, that is for sure, even if that means leaving the ear with severe hearing loss unaided and helping the other ear which has mild/moderate loss. I think that alone would have some advantages. Hopefully those steriods kick in enough so that i can get some speech recognition back in the left ear, or else i dont think he will do anything for that ear. What is the point of aiding an ear that can only understand 25% speech? By the way, when they do those speech tests, do they consider your hearing loss and try to boost frequencies that you have a loss in, or is it flat? seems to me that if you wanted to check speech recognition, you would try to compensate for the shape of the audiogram. Am i right?

A bi-cross is wireless these days but unless the audiologist specifically recommends it I am not sure if you will adapt to it. I had the old bi-cross when I was a kid with the wire behind the head so when I went for my first new aides they felt I should stick with one because that is what I was used to and they felt 2 separate aides would be to hard to adjust to. Well I tried the wireless bi-cross and it about drove me nuts. Tried to separate hearing aides and have done well with that ever since. A bi-cross may be fine for you but just be aware that even though I wore one for years it didn't work out for me when I needed a new one.