Well, well, I learn something new every day. Just looking over the chemotherapy agents. I took vincristine, when I had my "little problem". I thought that all I ended up from that was a touch of perpheral neuropathy. I never realized that it was ototoxic also.
It's really widespread, Phoenix. And there's a lot of snowball effect possibilities.
Since this has gotten more specific, I'll be more precise about the medications involved; the antibiotic was amoxycillin (usually) which is supposed to be one of the safer ones but I took a LOT of as a kid. Prednisone was in there somewhere, but I was actually thinking of Diamox, a diuretic. From the ototoxins site you found, Phoenix:
Quote:Diuretics generally considered Safe: Chlorthiazide
Diuretics are rarely a source of vestibulotoxicity. They are possibly a source of hearing disturbance. They may be synergistic with other aminoglycoside ototoxins such as gentamicin, neomycin, streptomycin and kanamycin. It seems prudent to attempt to avoid exposure to these agents if hearing is impaired.
(That's the one I was taking 2x/ day for 5 years.)
Sozobe- You really have to be on top of things, and really second guess doctors. Just wonder how many people have hearing disturbances, and don't have the foggiest idea of why it happened!
For sure. I was 13 at the time, though.
A friend of mine had it so awfully bad
that she lost her balance, got really
sick...I can remember what it is
called. Menier's Disease It took
her years to find a competent
physician who knew what was wrong
with her.
Hi there, Beedlesquoink (HCE) checking in on this topic.
I'm a musician who experienced ear problems a number of years ago. I spent a few summers scuba diving in the Keys and developed a problem that after much analysis and misdiagnosis turned out to be a mild staph infection of the inner ear. All symptoms pointed to tinitus, and that's what the first five doctors said, but that was not the fact of the matter. Several of them said, it won't go away. I prepared to spend the rest of my life with the precious hearing of my left ear compromised. Came to New York, did more medical probing, and after a while found one doctor who didn't go by the standard checklists. He asked if I'd ever been exposed to e coli laden water... I said, yes, in the notriously polluted Keys. He addressed it with specific antibiotics and the ear cleared up. It took a while, but at last testing both ears are back to normal functioning.
The moral is, never trust the first, or the first ten doctors. There's a tendency to lump things together into 'common ailments'... when they're wrong, they can frustrate the healing process.
Beedlesquoink
That's pretty interesting.
