Auditory plasticity

[foramenmagnum]

.........................

[AMazieLN]

In my experience, as someone who was profoundly deaf for 14 years, and am now SSD with a 60db loss in the other ear, it just makes it harder. I would rather have a severe loss in both ears than SSD. SSD causes so many problems. Completely missing speech on that side of the head, not having any directional hearing, few hearing aid options, etc.

[lohearn]

I have lost some of the hearing in my left ear. I fell 01/01/11 and landed on the left side of my face/head. I came to, was hurt and in my intoxicated mind decided that going to bed was my best course of action. It was the next morning when I truly noticed how bad my hearing really was in my left ear.

My right ear still hears well, but I don't think it hears better since my fall. Until my fall I had not had my hearing tested since I was in high school 30 years earlier. My hearing was always "exceptional", I would hear tones other people didn't. So to go from really good hearing to really bad hearing in one night was tough.

Now while my good ear doesn't hear any better, what I have experienced is that my brain has adapted to my hearing loss. Last year I was depressed, never knew how much losing my hearing could affect my life. Now, my hearing still sucks in my left ear but my brain has adapted to not getting proper sounds on that one side and I feel because of that I can hear better now than I could right after I fell.

So for me the answer is no, my hearing isn't more sensitive in my right ear. But, my brain had adapted to only getting the proper sounds in one ear and I feel better able to be out in the world now. I still have issues with being able to only hear correctly in one ear, I still can''t pinpoint where a sound is coming from, still miss out on things in social situations (have to ask people to repeat themselves), but it is better than it was last year.

[CallunaVulgaris]

I have SSD and while the hearing in my left ear is in normal ranges, I don't know that I hear "better" with it as a result of the SSD. I will say that my left ear is very sensitive to loud or high pitches noises, but I don't know that it is a result of the SSD (although my grandmother is the same way). There are many fewer choices of hearing aids for SSD though so hopefully people with this sort of hearing loss do like CROS because that may be one of the only options. My word recognition in my right ear is too poor for amplification but I'm lucky in that I love my CROS aids.

However, my experience with hearing loss was not immediate and I cannot pinpoint when it occurred (or whether I was born with it). Because my left ear's hearing is normal, though, many people do not realize I have hearing loss if I only interact with them in not so noisy environments so it does make it a lot harder for me if I go out with people as a group. That's the thing about (especially single-sided) hearing loss though--many people will not know until you tell them...or until you turn your head towards them so you can hear them with the hearing ear 1000 times!