I visited my doctor at the local health center, (hälsovårdscentral in Swedish) where they do the initial hearing tests no matter what issue you got. These medical teams have a very general and broad knowledge of different issues, and they make the first tests, to see if they need to send you to any type of specialist.
Since I notice that my tinnitus gets stronger during day when working with sound, i asked them to make 2 hearing tests. The first test in the morning, and the second test in the afternoon, after a normal day of work with sound.
The hearing test was the one where you listen to different sinus tones in closed headphones, and your challenge is to push a button when you hear a note.
The first test went pretty fine, I think. As you know as the test goes in to higher frequencies, it is getting more and more difficult to actually hear the notes. That is the case for most people, since loss of high frequency is very common. Even if we don’t expose our hearing to loud sounds, we will have a degraded hearing of the high frequencies as we get older. During the test, I found to what I should listen for. I had a hard time to hear when the note where being played, but I had much easier to hear when the note stopped playing. So I pushed the button whenever I heard a note stopped playing. I know, that is not how it’s supposed to be done – but that seemed to work for me, because I heard most of the tones being played.
At least, that was what I thought.
One problem with doing this first initial hearing test at a health center, is that their staff are not specialists in sound and hearing. So, they just play the sinus tones in frequency order, starting with the lowest on 125 Hz, continue with 250 Hz, and working their way up to 8 Khz.
Since the change of tones most of the time changes by 1 octave at a time, it is so easy to predict what tone that are coming next. That makes me prepared to listen really really careful for that frequency – and then it is easy to nail when I hear it. Or when I think I hear it…
I asked them to trigger the frequency in random order, but they did not seem to understand what point that would be. If you hear a note, you will hear it, they said. So, I pushed that button. Many times.
Here comes a highly personal note:
It seems like the medical world’s approach to tinnitus is that just because you hear a tone in your head, (which you do with tinnitus) that tone should not affect what you hear on a hearing test. Personally, that sounds strange to me. I have a tinnitus tone at 4 Khz ringing in my ears, and to me it would be reasonable if that tinnitus tone would mask a 4 Khz tone at the hearing test. And what I have read, many other people with tinnitus seem to have the same idea as me.
But hey – that are only my personal and other people with tinnitus ideas. Probably (actually most certainly) the professional audiologist and medical science are correct on this point. I believe in science, but sometimes I have to think – what if…
End of personal note.
The two tests I performed in the morning and in the afternoon gave pretty much the same result. It did not seem to make any difference if I had fresh ears in the morning, or if I had tired ears in the afternoon.
After these two tests, I met with my doctor for a valuation. He did not seem happy at all. His first sign of my result at the hearing test, was the he just shook his head from left to right, with a very sad facial expression. We could clearly see at the audiogram that my hearing was starting to fall off at 3 Khz, ending with a big dip at 8 Khz. My doctor was very worried. For me, it was more of a confirmation that there where issues with my hearing. Actually, I felt a bit relieved. At last, we had a result that we could investigate further, and make up a plan how to move on from here.
And it was a good feeling that I finally actually did something about my hearing instead of just lying to myself with believing that it was ok. It was time to get down to business and do what I have to do about my hearing.
I told the doctor that the hearing had been much worse after my covid infection, and that’s why I had contacted him. He was skeptical to my theory that covid should have had an effect on my hearing. He thought it looked more like a normal noise induced hearing loss, after a working life with music and sound for many years. An occupational injury.
I am not an educated doctor, but I strongly believe that we both were right. Of course, my hearing has been degraded after a long life working with music and sound production, but as I noticed so drastically that my hearing changed after the covid infection I believe that made my hearing issues to tip over.
Now in 2021, there are coming more and more reports from people having post-covid conditions that hearing problems is pretty common. At this point ca 5% of the post-covid patients are claiming problems with hearing. We will see in the future what medical research will tell us about it.
Anyhow, my doctor was not happy with my hearing test result. And neither where i. So, the doctor referred me to an audiologist to make a proper hearing test in proper conditions. After all, their need to be a specialist to make the final decision on what the exact status of my hearing is.