When you receive a diagnosis of an Acoustic Neuroma/ Vestibular Schwannoma, it doesn’t take much research to find out that many AN warriors lose most or all of their hearing on one side. Oftentimes you wonder what that will be like. Or after you are single sided deaf it can be hard for friends and family to understand what life is like for you. I will do my best to describe it here to hopefully help start useful conversations and communication regarding life with one ear.

The best description of single sided deafness I have found is that it is like you are on the phone and the person on the other end is on speakerphone at a party. Without two ears to hone in on the sound all the noise in the room becomes a mish mash mixed together. It can be hard to realize someone is starting to talk to you because you may not hear them as louder when they face you. You also lose your ability to sound locate when you are single sided deaf- which my kiddos think is hilarious when we play hide and seek and they can giggle to their hearts’ content without giving themselves away.

The big problem when you have one ear is background noise. In a quiet room, you can often easily understand everything spoken. But go to a crowded restaurant with high ceilings so the noise bounces around, and you may struggle to understand even the person across from you at the table. Unfortunately, hearing devices have not fully solved the background noise issue. Most folks find that they do better in a background noise situation with a hearing device, but it is nowhere near as good as two functional ears.

With single sided deafness, you also have a deaf cone. I could literally draw a picture of where someone can stand and speak and I have no clue they are talking because my head blocks the sound from traveling to my hearing ear. Because of this, it is very important you constantly look around and use your eyes to notify you- especially in a safety scenario like dealing with traffic.

Hearing fatigue is very real when you only have one functional ear. In a person with normal hearing, listening often costs extremely little in terms of energy, say $.0001. When you become single sided deaf hearing now costs more, let’s say pennies. It is super common to find yourself getting very tired out by listening and needing to take breaks or not multitask while hearing. Your brain needs to use a lot more processing power to figure out what is being communicated. It is important to plan in even small quiet breaks to help with the fatigue of listening.

Also, when you are single sided deaf you can feel like you are playing a game of mad libs, where you catch some of the words but others are missing so you are filling in the blanks with the most likely words. This can mean that you miss punch lines or jokes because often a joke doesn’t make sense and so while you sit there trying to fill in the blanks with a logical word the person who makes the joke may think you lack a sense of humor.

One other issue you run into with one functional ear is the inability to use stereo headphones. Make sure your device or headphones have a mono setting so you don’t end up missing half the instruments that are playing on the deaf side.

The good news is that in a quiet and well set up environment you can have moments of hearing that feel absolutely normal. And there are many things you can do to ameliorate the difficulties of single sided deafness- hearing devices, better physical space set up, technological solutions like live transcribe, auditory rehabilitation, and so on. Most folks find with some adaptation they can continue to live a fantastic life, it just may take a little extra planning and ingenuity.