Day Two - Visit to the ENT

 ...Monday morning.

I had spent the wee hours of Sunday morning in the ER and was told to contact an ENT on Monday.  I had all day Sunday to consult Dr. Google and put a name to what I probably had which was Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss.  I read that it is considered a medical emergency and must be treated immediately with steroids - time being of the essence.

I started out by calling the ENT referred by the ER, and was told their soonest appointment was the next week. Yes, I told them I had SSNHL, and yes, I argued with them that I needed to be seen right away.  Finally the person I was talking to agreed to put me on hold while she passed my concerns onto the nurse on duty only to come back and say, "the nurse says there is no problem waiting a week."  

I'll add here that the best case scenario is to start treatment with steroids within 24-48 hours of the onset of the hearing loss.  Odds of recovery diminish with every day you wait. This was not okay!  So I decided to call another provider and see if I could get in right away.

Here I was reeling from the experience of being suddenly deaf in one ear, scared and anxious, and trying to call for an appointment.  I ran down the list of all the ENTs in my area and no one would see me that day.  None were available until one week to two months out.  I called at least six providers altogether asking if they could get me an "urgent" visit only to repeatedly be told "No!" no matter how much I argued with them.  I finally found an ENT that would see me that afternoon and even that one took some argument with the front desk before they would give way.

The ENT physician was able to see my ER test results, so that was helpful in her being able to rule out some possible causes of my hearing loss. I was given an auditory test which showed my loss as "severe to profound" in my right ear.  I got no word recognition score, because I couldn't hear words at all - I was noted as CNT meaning "could not test." (I was also found to have some mild hearing loss in the good ear, which they said was a gradual age related loss and which I had barely noticed.) 

The doctor prescribed a high dose of Prednisone (tapering over ten days) and she reiterated that I should pick up the prescription on my way home and start taking it right away - "don't wait," she told me.  Finally, someone who recognized what happened to me and took it seriously.