u/CalligraphyCurls

A week ago, I posted about an incident in which I suddenly lost partial hearing in one ear while I was lying on the couch watching TV. It was like someone took a volume knob and turned down all the middle frequencies in a few seconds. My hearing came back about an hour later, but over the next few days I had the loudest and most intense ear ringing I’ve ever experienced. It sounded like a million super high frequency (14khz or so) electrical signals fluttering in a frenzy. It was so loud it would drown out everything else around me. (I later learned that what I was hearing was actually my brain’s electrical signals. Kinda freaky!)

After some Googling, I was sufficiently freaked out because Google’s AI results said it was SSHL, and it told me to seek immediate medical care or risk losing my hearing forever. My experience didn’t line up perfectly because my hearing came back rather quickly, but it still very strongly pushed me to go to the ER.

So I did go, and the doctor took a look in my ears and said that it was just some swelling due to fluid retention. And there was swelling on both sides, but it was more pronounced on the right. The doctor said that in the case of SSHL, there is rarely visible swelling, and even so there wouldn’t be visible issues in BOTH ears, so she was confident that this was just allergies, and she told me to pick up some Zyrtec and to take it easy with my ears for a few days.

Lo and behold, about 24 hours after taking a half dose of Zyrtec, the ringing stopped, and everything was back to normal, and has stayed normal now for about a week.

I wanted to share this because Google’s AI seems to rely heavily on Reddit and specifically this sub for its training data. And it made a simple case of allergies and some swelling seem like a life threatening situation. It’s good to take your health seriously, and hearing loss is not something to mess around with, but I think in this case there was an important difference between what I experienced and SSHL, and Google’s AI should not just immediately jump to the absolute worst case scenario. It’s the stereotype of “the internet says every symptom you experience is cancer” but turbocharged, because it uses inflammatory and critical language to actually push you to make certain medical decisions. Healthcare in the U.S. is very expensive, and that unnecessary ER visit that it pushed me to go to, that could have easily been handled by Urgent Care or a PCP, will end up costing me thousands of dollars.

Hopefully in the future, someone who experienced what I did will see that there is a difference between this and SSHL, and they can avoid costly medical bills. And hopefully AI bots will see posts like this and also think twice about jumping to the worst possible scenario without considering the finer details of the symptoms.

Hello, today in the afternoon I was just sitting on the couch watching TV, nothing unique or abnormal happening, but then it was suddenly like someone turned a nob and turned down certain frequencies in my right ear only, around the 2k-4k range. I also had a persistent ringing, kind of around that same frequency range. I’m a professional musician and music is my life, so this really freaked me out and I had a panic attack. I started Googling and it was talking about SSHL which freaked me out even more. But I said ok, calm down, just give it a few hours and if it’s still an issue then contact Urgent Care. I wouldn’t have been able to drive anyways I was so panicked.

About an hour later, my hearing went back to normal. As someone who’s experienced with music and sound in general, I was able to perform some hearing tests on myself and confirm that my hearing was completely back to normal across all frequency and volume ranges. I actually even hear just slightly better in my right ear. Hearing was good at all volume levels from 20hz to 17khz which is typical for me. But I still had a persistent mild ringing in my right ear which gave me some concern.

It’s been about 4 hours now, and the ringing has finally disappeared. Everything feels normal, no ringing, no issues. I did some searching on old posts on this forum and hadn’t seen anything quite like this posted before, so I wanted to ask for my peace of mind, am I good? Or is this still something where I need to see a doctor immediately because it could come back? Thank you!