How sound sensitivity impacts my life as a mom, therapist and athlete: Part 1

WE LOVE DIRT!

Me and my daughter riding bikes together before I became deaf in my right ear from brain tumor surgery.

This photo was taken in 2018 before I became deaf in my right ear. How was I to know that just a year later I would be having a surgery to remove a benign brain tumor called an Acoustic Neuroma! My life has changed so much since that day.

The type of tumor I had grows around and into the hearing and balance nerve inside the skull, mine was the size of a lime (3cm) and the neurosurgeon had to cut the balance and hearing nerves in order to remove all of the tumor. I made a YouTube video you can watch that tells the story in more detail.

After I lost my hearing, I noticed that I had a lot of problems with balance and exhaustion. This is a real issue for people that have sudden loss of hearing. The term is called “brain fatigue”. This happens when your brain is healing from an injury, in my case the Acoustic Neuroma removal. Consequently, my brain was working extra hard to determine where sounds were coming from so I could orient myself in space, this is called proprioception. Since I no longer had that balance nerve to help me stay upright, my left side was doing twice the work. I was frequently tired and crabby from too many sounds in my environment. As a way to cope with this overwhelm I turned to common tools used for neurodivergent people (AHDH and Autism) to help with Hyperacusis and Misophonia. The various types of hearing protection can dampen sounds or completely cancel them out depending on your needs. I noticed that my anxiety levels were a big predictor of which headphones I used on a given day.

Ear Protection for sound sensitivity!

I tried several kinds of hearing protection and if you would like to watch my video about each type scroll on down. These have been immensely helpful for me in my work as a Therapist so I can hear my clients during our virtual calls. Next blog I will share how these help me with overwhelm with a loud child in the home :)