Caught a Cold-Hearing Gone

Traveled on a plane for a diving trip.  Lady a few rows up kept sneezing.   I had a premonition that she was going to get everyone around her sick.  Came down with the cold at the end of the trip and had to cancel the last day of diving.  My hearing was immediately effected and I attributed it to the congestion and swelling.   Now, I am almost two weeks out and my hearing has not improved.  Taking Sudafed daily with little, and only temporary, improvement.   Starting to worry that this might not get better.  Having trouble understanding Annie in the same room.  Going to call my ENT for an appt on Monday.  Give it one more week to improve.
Just reviewed an old post, "and now allergies".   I talked about having the same fullness in both my ears like a normal person gets with altitude changes.  Used Claritin with some relief then.   Maybe I should switch from Sudafed to an allergy med?

Vertigo kept me in bed

All the holiday eating caught up with me this morning.   Got to admit, I felt symptoms coming on for a while now.  An occasional moment of spinning.  Tinnitus getting louder.  Hearing not as good for several days.    Then this morning, woke up to go pee and the room was oscillating back and forth. The ceiling light was moving right and left.   I tried to get up and had to hold onto the walls.   The waves of nausea caused me to sit on the edge of the tub waiting to puke.  It never came.    Got back to bed and closed my eyes.  Relief with my eyes closed and motionless.   Fell back to sleep until noon.
Drank four liters in the afternoon, trying to flush out.   Must have been really dehydrated because my urine production hasn't met that.    Remember I didn't drink my usual amounts while at work recently.  Have been out of my routine since going on to San Diego.  
Got to get back into my hydrating starting at work tomorrow.

deterioration

I suppose the natural course of the disease is going to have it's way.    My tinnitus has been bad for a while. Last week, I started having some mild vertigo symptoms.  I got in to see Dr Stewart locally for a steroid injection but did not have the improvement in symptoms that I had with previous injections.   I can tell that my hearing is worse lately.  I'm playing with the adjustments on my HA more.  Might be time to go in to have them adjusted again.
Still have some very mild vertigo symptoms.  If I turn my head, sometimes it keeps turning for a second.  Never had it so bad that I had nausea or was incapacitated.  What is really annoying is the ringing.  the constant ringing.  I think if that went away, I would hear better.  It really is the volume of ringing that keeps me from hearing things under that volume.
Hearing test this week.  It's been almost a year since the last one.   Fearful of what it will show.

Stable?

Had the audi and dr visit today.   The diagram is pretty much the same as a year ago-within 5db.  Discussed with Dr Stewart that the vertigo symptoms I was having led me to call for an injection and those are better.  The tinnitus is constant and fluctuates in volume.  The ringing is the worst hindrance to hearing.  When it is loud, I have trouble hearing speech under it.  
So, things seem to be stable objectively.  Dr did restate that the long term course of this disease is continued hearing loss and they have no way to stop that.   Oh well.   At least, it's not cancer.  

Temporary results

The success I had with the steroid injection has nearly completely worn off.  Tinnitus is back & constant.  Worse is that the hearing in my left ear is diminished again.  Not quite as bad as before but certainly down.   The hearing aids work to compensate.  Don't know if I can have another injection or if its even worth it for the temporary improvement.

Dr Gopen UCLA & Success w Steroids

Getting to the UCLA medical campus is an adventure all by itself.  Crowded freeways and streets.  Garmin got us to the building.
Dr Gopen met with us for 20 mins, I guess.  I didn't keep track but I talked a long time of where I have been since first developing tinnitus,  Dr Hegarty and the ENT I tried in SLO.  He discussed Meniere's disease at length, giving more detail than Dr Hegarty did.  Subgroups, new imaging revealing new anatomy that is insignificant in actual treatment of people and he discussed my audiogram in detail that Dr H never did.   Overall, he didn't have anything new to offer me and besides much more detail, he didn't tell me anything I didn't know.  Meniere's is a mystery, treatment is a guess and when I am dead, my temporal bone can be donated for research.
He offered the steroid injection and I said yes.  It was what I came all that way for.   That sucker hurt more than when Dr H did it.  I believe he put an extra volume in.  I never tasted it when Dr H did it, either.  I laid there with the ear up for thirty minutes and then walked out.  Just like that.  He had already moved onto his next patient.   He gave me his card with an email and said that if I wanted another injection, to email and he would squeeze me into his clinic.
By that evening, I had a large improvement in my hearing and turned off my aid.  I didn't notice until after that the tinnitus was gone.    So, apparently, I am in that subgroup he talked about that responds to steroids.   Lucky me!
Being in San Diego and visiting, we ate out a lot.  I know I had some meals that went way over my salt allowance.  I took double diuretics and flushed with a gallon of bottled water.  The tinnitus is back at a low volume 36 hrs after the injection but I think the hearing is still good.  No hearing aids all day.  I turned them on for a bit today and it was just too loud.  
I'm going to contact the SLO ENT one more time and see if he or one the partners will reconsider doing the injection here in SLO and save me the drive to LA.

UCLA is a long way away

My insurance plan authorized me to see a Neurotologist at UCLA.  I looked up Dr Gopen, both his website at UCLA and on Healthgrades.  He gets high marks.  A young guy who somewhat resembles Dr Hegarty.  This will probably be ok but it is nearly 4 hrs away.  I have a 9am appt so I will either have to get up really early or drive down the night before. My hearing has been down.  I  had a little improvement with the steroid blast/taper but the last couple of days have been poor.   I went to Costco to get my HA adjusted.  Added a program with just a little more volume.  I'm having trouble hearing a few people at work.    This is frustrating.