“You have sudden sensorineural hearing loss,” the ear-nose-and-throat doctor tells me. When I protest saying that can't be it, that I've felt extreme pressure in my left ear for a month, he explains that this is how some people experience the inability to hear low register sounds.
“How did this happen?” I'm stunned.
“There’s lots of potential causes,” the doctor says, “often we can’t pinpoint what it was, sometimes it’s reversible, sometimes not. In that case, we can always try a hearing aid.”
I nearly cry, it’s one day past my forty-second birthday.
