My Concussion: fixing my hearing

Shortly after I wrote my one year anniversary blog post, I began researching panic attacks after concussions. I was also missing words when listening to people talk, especially if there was background noise. As a result, I had a hard time concentrating and finding the right words when talking. No wonder it was so difficult to write! 

Finally, I found a great website for military personnel that detailed all the tests I should have had after being diagnosed with a concussion. It advised getting one's sight and hearing checked right away after a concussion. Why didn't the local hospital tell me that? I'm still rather irked that I wasted more than a year thinking I would never be able to lead a normal life again when all I really needed was to get my hearing checked.

I found a highly rated audiologist with a free two-hour evaluation and made an appointment. The audiologist sent me a video about the damage hearing loss does to a person's cognitive abilities. People with hearing problems have an increased risk of dementia due to lack of proper auditory stimulation, which leads to the degeneration of the auditory nerve. Hearing problems can also cause social isolation, depression, cognitive overload, memory problems, increased risk of falling and deteriorating  quality of life. I think I experienced everything on this list except depression.

I went into my appointment thinking that I had a noise sensitivity and would need ear filters. After going through multiple tests, I discovered that my problem was that I was hearing differently in each ear. In one ear, I had high frequency hearing loss and in the other ear I had low frequency hearing loss. This unusual condition is called asymmetric hearing loss. My poor brain had been trying to process different sounds from each ear and that's why I had cognitive overload and became overwhelmed in noisy crowded places. My uncorrected asymmetric hearing loss had caused my brain to abandon my previously existing auditory pathway and generate a new, inefficient auditory pathway, which overloaded easily.

So, I now have hearing aids in each ear. They will be gradually tuned so that my brain can catch up and reprogram itself. It will take six to eighteen months for my brain to be fully reprogrammed, but I am already hearing well enough to eat in noisy places without any problems. Some noises are still too loud, though. I can tune down the hearing aids a little bit, but sound reducing headphones work better.

I received my hearing aids May 15th and left for a two week trip to the UK on July 12th. On the whole, I did fine with loud noises--except when we visited what should be peaceful Kew Gardens, outside of London. I went there in 1976, found it quiet and fascinating, and was eager to show it to my family. Since then, Heathrow Airport added a new runway that has resulted in large, low-flying airplanes flying over the Gardens and nearby town of Kew, bringing almost constant disruptive noise along with them. Because I didn't bring my headphones with me that day, I didn't handle it very well. But without my hearing aids, it probably would have been a lot worse.

July 20, 2023 at Kew Gardens

Here is an interesting post about living under the flight-path of Heathrow Airport during the pandemic: https://hacan.org.uk/?p=78676

My Concussion: One Year Anniversary

Today is May 2, 2023, one year to the day after my concussion. In many ways, I feel like it was a lost year. For months, I easily became overwhelmed when driving and shopping, continued to be sensitive to light and noise, and experienced panic attacks. I felt disoriented and tired and had daily headaches and I never regained my sense of smell.

My daughter has a podcast called Live from Suckville in which she interviewed me about my concussion last June, which was still early in my recovery. If you want to listen to it, it is Episode 9 on this website: https://soundcloud.com/user-168118630 

It took me months before I finally went to the eye doctor for my annual checkup. There, I learned that my eyes were misaligned, which was probably caused by the concussion. Now I understood why I had such a hard time reading, shopping, driving, concentrating and mentally focusing on the book I've been working on for over two years (and still haven't finished). I was seeing in 2-D and it seemed like everything was coming at me all at once. When shopping, I had to run out of the store in a panic. When driving, my peripheral vision was all messed up and, overwhelmed, I had to pull over so my husband could drive. When I received my first pair of prism eye glasses, my headache intensity considerably lessened, my eyes felt much less tired, I could handle shopping and driving, and I could see in 3-D again. (Prism glasses reflect light in such a way that misaligned eyes are corrected). It was amazing how much easier life became.

 But my headaches continued to be almost constant. They felt like they were on the top of my head, where I fractured my skull, but I think they were tension headaches coming from somewhere else. So I went back to the concussion doctor, who I last saw 3 weeks after my concussion. She thought that perhaps I had suffered whiplash when I hit the ground and the headaches could be caused by that. I then went to a physical therapist who gave me neck exercises and acupuncture (he called it dry needling). After three weeks of treatment, my headaches are essentially gone, although I still have to practice the neck exercises every other day.

I also went to a speech and language therapist because I sometimes had trouble finding words when speaking. After two hours of tests, I was relieved to learn I don't have cognitive brain damage and my trouble with words probably was caused by cognitive fatigue. My brain was spinning all the time, causing it to be exhausted and depleted of energy, which significantly slowed down my recovery. At the same time, my brain was trying to function normally and heal by rerouting around damaged areas. Doing additional work like this takes a lot of energy and if I tried to "push through," I ended up totally exhausted and couldn't think or concentrate. 

To correct this problem, I made it a habit to periodically evaluate my energy level. If it was low, I needed to take a break--for me that meant performing diaphragmatic breathing and neck exercises--to restore my energy level and then back to what I was doing until I got tired again. I stopped multitasking, which was a quick way to exhaust myself while not doing a very good job with what I managed to get done. Which explains why I'm now on the third revision of a manuscript that is not even finished yet!!

So, I can see in 3-D now, I no longer have headaches, I can concentrate a lot better than before and I can go shopping with ease--as long as the music isn't too loud and the store isn't too crowded. Which brings me to one more problem I hadn't solved yet: noise sensitivity. 

In late February, my husband and I started traveling again, which meant going out to eat. That was when I noticed that noisy restaurants put me into a panic because I couldn't filter out background noises from regular noises or tell where they were coming from. Loud music, talking, silverware clattering on plates, bright lights and movement all jumbled together and overloaded my senses, making me very anxious. I had to run out of restaurants several times just to get to somewhere quiet. I had to ask restaurant staff to turn their music down or seat me in their quietest corner and at a side table with my back to the wall so that all the noise would come from one direction. Otherwise I couldn't handle it. 

Finally, I made another appointment with the speech and language therapist for suggestions about ways to overcome this. But she seemed at a loss. I'm especially worried because we are planning a family trip to the UK in mid-July. So what can I do to fix this? I have no clue.

Which brings me full circle: I still can't smell anything. It's hard to explain how losing this sense impacts my daily life. It's a sense we take for granted; until it's gone. So going out to eat, which is such an important part of socializing, especially when traveling, is now more of an ordeal than anything else. And the smell of roses or the rain or baking bread or brewing coffee has to be remembered rather than reinforced. Because I don't get the "whole picture" now, everyday life is harder to remember and always seems like something is missing. Cooking dinner has become cooking for others, not for me. 

At least I figured out that protein smoothies for breakfast with its cold temperature and smooth, velvety mouthfeel is rewarding. So I have one every morning. Lunch has become whatever I can grab to satisfy my hunger and dinner is what agrees with me. I've lost about five pounds because I don't eat fattening sweets anymore except for the occasional ice cream or gelato. As far as cake, pie and cookies . . . why eat all those empty calories if I can't taste them? I can taste dark chocolate, though, especially when I melt it in my mouth. 

What I have learned from this experience so far is that it could have been much worse. Also, I have a wonderful husband and family who support me, a beautiful peaceful place to live in and good friends. How could I ask for more??