I came back from a great morning swim and sauna with my friend Glen from Sydney, and noticed my ear felt a bit blocked. I tried shaking my head but the ‘water’ stayed in there! That evening not only was my ear still blocked, but things were starting to sound a little strange. It was like when people talked I could hear then coming from inside my ear, not out in the room. It was starting to get a bit annoying.
It was getting more irritating so that I put some headphones on my ear to stop the noise.
Two weeks later I was watching a movie with the family and playing with my headphones and I realised that if I blocked my left (good ear) I was completely deaf in my right ear!
So I booked into the local medical centre. Over the next 2 weeks I was in and out of there with ear drops, ear cleaning, and antibiotics, but no improvement. In fact things seemed to be getting worse. My right ear was becoming so sensitive to noise that I could not be around people.
By trial and error I found that if I plugged my bad ear, it became manageable. So over the next few weeks I was attending meetings with one of my ears plugged.
CIST and SSHL 