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Tympanoplasty, anyone?

Cream Fan

Active member
Joined
May 1, 2003
Messages
2,695
I recently had my right ear operated on, something that needed to be done for a long time. The surgery was performed by Dr. John House of the House Ear Clinic here in Los Angeles and I'm told it went really well. Now, my right ear is all plugged up with packing and I have a nice new eardrum without the horrible scarring of the old one. My question is if anyone else on the Forum has had this type of surgery and whether they ended up with better hearing, worse hearing or no significant change. I'm hoping that my hearing will at least be marginally better as the new tympanic membrane is not punctured, like the old one was, thereby at least giving me a little more volume. Any loss from nerve damage will not be improved, of course. So, please Forum brothers and sisters, lend me your ear stories....
 

Cliff Gress

Well-known member
Joined
Aug 26, 2004
Messages
3,301
Hey Cream Fan. Hope that your ear recovers well, and that you get volume back. I've lost much of my ability to hear high frequencies and suffer from tinnitus. Old age is so great.
 

Cream Fan

Active member
Joined
May 1, 2003
Messages
2,695
Most of my hearing loss occurred as a child from chronic ear infections due to allergies. Had to have tubes put in both eardrums several times and the fluid that filled the middle ear drained; the last two times were in my mid-twenties. The eardrums decided to not heal over after the last time, because of significant scarring. The left ear has a bigger hole, and is the brighter of the two. The right ear had skin building up behind the drum as a result of the drum trying to perpetually heal itself. The resultant mass, what is known as a cholesteatoma, was the ticking time bomb that had to be removed or risk total loss of hearing in that ear. I'm hopeful that once the packing is completely dissolved, the hearing in that ear will be a bit better than it was.
 

renderit

Well-known member
Joined
Jan 19, 2009
Messages
10,951
Good luck. Ears ain't fun. Be happy with whatever you have.
 

Don

Well-known member
Joined
Dec 1, 2001
Messages
5,732
Most of my hearing loss occurred as a child from chronic ear infections due to allergies. Had to have tubes put in both eardrums several times and the fluid that filled the middle ear drained; the last two times were in my mid-twenties. The eardrums decided to not heal over after the last time, because of significant scarring. The left ear has a bigger hole, and is the brighter of the two. The right ear had skin building up behind the drum as a result of the drum trying to perpetually heal itself. The resultant mass, what is known as a cholesteatoma, was the ticking time bomb that had to be removed or risk total loss of hearing in that ear. I'm hopeful that once the packing is completely dissolved, the hearing in that ear will be a bit better than it was.

That sounds like my son's ear issues. He had so many antibiotics as a child that it cause decalcified teeth! He has had tubes put in on a couple of occasions. He went to the emergency room on Christmas eve and got antibiotics for an ear infection. They said he has a ruptured ear drum. He's seeing his ENT on Monday. He's 22 now.

Let us know how you procedure turns out.
 

Cream Fan

Active member
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May 1, 2003
Messages
2,695
I was literally 2 or 3 years old when my issues started and thus I have no memory of how the individual ear infections were treated. Part of my issue is eustachian tubes that don't function with any reliable regularity, so that I end up with negative pressure inside the middle ear, which draws fluid from out of the surrounding tissues and fills the middle ear. This is known as serous otitis. While my hearing was damaged it was also saved in the sense that all the concerts I attended in my teens and early 20s were filtered through another bout of serous otitis of which I was unaware. My friends and I would leave the concert and they would say, "Fuck, my ears are ringing." And I would say, "What are you talking about, mine are fine." At least one good thing came out of it.
 

Steve Craw

Formerly Lefty Elmo
Joined
Sep 9, 2004
Messages
5,294
My daughter had this procedure done, due to the same issues as you. She's as right as rain. Best of luck to you.
 

Redhod

Active member
Joined
May 2, 2002
Messages
540
I had my left eardrum replaced twice. It's been fine now for over ten years but it was something to go through.

My ear problems started when I was 5 or so. In the '50s, they experimented with blasting kids with radiation, which was later shown to be real dangerous and led in some cases to thyroid damage.

I've always been at risk when I'm swimming for fear of puncturing my eardrums. What did me in ten years ago was leaning back in a bathtub! Anyway, it really punctured -- like a snare drum with a hole in it -- and wouldn't heal. The hole was too big. And, man, my hearing was really dodgy in this period. the doctors made an incision behind my ear shell and removed some fascia off the "muscle" and grafted it on the eardrum. It was better but didn't heal completely. I went to a different doc next time and this operation (real surgery, knocked out, etc) the job took and I've been good ever since.

I think the normal wear of a rocker's life has lowered my hearing and I'll probably be getting hearing aids with five years.

But I do hope your operation went well. For the longest time after mine, I took every precaution about not getting water in my eardrums. I used this awful mixture of vaseline and cotton to stop up my ears. No kidding! But I don't do that anymore. And while I like to swim, I gave it up completely.

Keep on protecting those ears! Invest in custom molded earplugs!
 

Cream Fan

Active member
Joined
May 1, 2003
Messages
2,695
Redhod, glad to hear yours worked out fine. Hope I don't have to do it twice, unless it's for the left ear, which has a bigger hole than the right one did. What did they use radiation to treat? My problem was allergies and chronic ear infections when I was 2 or 3 years old.

I'm due to see the doctor again on the 23rd, where he's going to remove the last of the packing in my ear canal. I'm hearing more out of my right ear, but It's still muffled, which means the drops I've been using for the last ten days, can only dissolve the packing so much. Hoping I'll hear a significant difference.

I've been using cotton in my ears for years, as both eardrums had holes in them from the tubes placed in them. I don't use vaseline. The one time I tried that I hated it. I've just become an expert at washing my hair and not getting water in them. Thus the cotton is still dry when I towel off. As for the punctured eardrums, my problem as a child was serous otitis, which simply means fluid accumulation in the middle ear. This was due to negative pressure, because my eustachian tubes are less than competent in doing the job of equalizing the pressure. Dr. House assures me I won't have to worry about history repeating itself, but that's always been in the back of my mind. What if? I don't know if my hearing will be better or worse, but I'd be satisfied if it was no worse than it was prior to the operation. I was used to it.

As for hearing aids, I will resist those to the end. They are designed strictly so that people can hear and understand speech—that's it. No one, to my knowledge has a pair that would have a frequency response of 20hz to 20,000hz. If they did, you'd probably need a cellphone battery to power them, not those tiny wafer batteries one has to change twice a day. Maybe the trick would be to invest in high quality in-ear monitors and attach a small high-quality mic that could be attached to one's lapel. It might be too visible for some people, but all I care about is being able to hear music the way it's meant to be heard, and not sounding like some tinny mess.
 

Lorris007

New member
Joined
Dec 16, 2019
Messages
4
A friend of mine still has such problems with hearing. He had surgery, but unfortunately, it didn't help. You need to wear a hearing aid. We prisoners are with him, and for us, this device does not matter, even he has already grown accustomed to it. We all thought we would help him with something, we raised money and bought a device that helps him hear better, besides the hearing aid. Something like amplifying sound waves in closed rooms and he already hears better than us :). I can see on https://www.access-market.com more information about him.
 
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