I may be Going selectively deaf (missing the most important tones in life)

A little help would be nice. You see I am getting older and well a bit more deaf. My ears have been subjected to various noises/vibrations for a long time and I fear they are wearing out a bit. As you may know the hairs that feel the vibrations in the inner ear can become detached or fail at various frequencies and that tone area make a dead spot in your hearing spectrum. So hair/hear/here I am right around 60yrs old and the tone in which my lovely spouse seems to use for her normal talking voice is not picking up as well as it should. I may have claimed that that portion is just about worn out, and if she want’s my attention she should say my name, then tell me what she wants me to hear. If my name is called I tend to rotate my head and point both ears in reception mode giving me a slightly better chance, or Further if she perhaps talks in a different tone so I can easily pick it up. Well anyone who has been with the same person for 4+ decades  will know this does not always go over well. Some times the follow up tone is shouting at stadium concert levels, followed by baby talk voice. So this brings me to the primary question. Is there a permie style methods to clean the wax out of your ears in a manner that may help me hear just bit better to not frustrate my lovely and gracious that normally tolerates me. I would like to give it one last ditch try before seeing a doctor about plastic hearing thingies to stuff in my ears to unleash the celestial tones?

Hi J;
Well J, welcome to the men's over 60 club.
I am 65 and I have the exact same issue with most female voices and any soft-spoken person.
Try a bobby pin to carefully clean the wax, it might help... but don't get your hopes up.

I have been running heavy equipment all my life.
Thanks to the union I was eligible to receive free top of the line plastic thingys.
I have them now and it is truly amazing the things I hear with them on. (Key words there) "with them on".
I can hear my wife most of the time, other small sounds seem really loud.
Overall, they are worth having, but there is a problem with them for me.
I can't wear them anywhere it is too noisy, I can't wear them in my shop working.
I can only wear them in the evening sitting indoors, or if the wife and I make a road trip to town.
So therefore I hardly wear them.

They are small, light, and hardly noticeable.
I do not mind wearing them.
They are nothing like the hearing aids your dad wore.
 

What Thomas said.  To add, I am not anti hearing aid ( I wear a couple) , but do keep in mind that hearing aid sales people sell hearing aids.   In a conversation I bluntly directed an employee not to go to a hearing aid sales place but  to see an audiologist first. The next week he had a $1500 hearing aid in each ear.  He skipped the audiologist part. A couple of years later he learned he had a tumor in each ear as well. So, you seem to be in the right track……

My sister got expensive hearing aids. She did the research. She saw a specialist. Her research suggested that if you're going to get them, get the right ones for your specific loss and pay the higher cost.

So far, I haven't needed them. I have a mild auditory dyslexia which has made me super sensitive to background noise and instilled in me a great desire to protect my ears from all the things ears don't like.

However, I am very prone to wax build up. If you think that might be part of your problem, my approach is to:
1. put some drops of a light oil in one ear and lie on the opposite side for about 15 minutes so it soaks into the wax.
2. repeat every couple of days for a week.
3. get a syringe, fill it with warm water, lean over the sink, and squirt it into the side of the ear - *not* straight at the drum! The goal is to squirt water at the edge to get behind the wax and swish it out.

Yes, this is a pain in the ass. I've had doctors syringe out my ears in the past, and if I am good about oiling them regularly, I can generally avoid having to see them.

I don't like the idea of putting any hard object in my ear - did I say I protect my ears???

One of my oldest and dearest friends is an audiologist. I asked her once (roughly 36yrs ago) about the practice my mom had taught me, of letting Peroxide soak, soften, and bubble the wax buildup out of my ears. She said it was the only thing she'd recommend, other than the oil method, Jay wrote of. The process is pretty much the same, but tickles - and if your ears are very bad, it gets quite warm, but not uncomfortably so. I so do both ears about one per month.

I am easily & often auditorially overwhelmed, and sounds blend together, so that I struggle to separate them. I'm also a lifetime sufferer of tinnitus - I have no idea what it would feel like, to not experience ringing in my ears, with an average of 4 or 5 tones, at once, often so many, they just all blend. It might not be terrible, if they'd at least harmonize, but it's typically more like standing in the hallway between a bunch of music practice rooms, with different beginners, playing different song on different instruments... badly. It tends to melliw a little bit, for a week or so, after the Peroxide, though nothing has ever eliminated it. Makes getting to sleep a bit of a challenge...

I think the soften and rinse idea sounds alot better that having a doctor vacuum my ears out, Yikes. My mom did the hydrogen peroxide warm water mixed 50:50 on my ears when I was in swim team, to help clean them. It's worth a try. We keep peroxide in the Laundry room to get blood stains out. Think I'll mix a batch up this evening before i head into the shower. Excellent tip on audiologist, vs salesperson, thanks.
(post ear cleaning update)  I did the hydrogen peroxide and water treatment, lots of bubbling noises and some slimy stuff came out of my ears. hearing is slightly better, but if there's background noises or they are not facing me when the talks I still have trouble picking up the conversation. All said the cleaning the ears improvement helps but I'll be planning a visit to an audiologist, thanks all!

Thanks for the update.  Hearing aids come with their own problems.  They are easy to lose. I established a routine of when I put them in and take them out. I also pick of lots of background sounds.  This is great in some settings.   I leave them on the charger when I deal with the livestock.  I don’t need to hear the goats screaming at me any better.  Even though they tend to stay in very well. I did have one fall out when I was in the hay shed.  Through some divine intervention, I reached down into the hay and felt it …even though I could not see it.  I don’t wear them in the hay shed any more. In fact, I rarely wear them when I am outside working.

I'm glad to see you tried the peroxide. I also have serious wax production, apparently, and every so often I end up not hearing much if I don't keep on top of it.

I just popped in here to say I think it's so awesome that you're being proactive about it. "They say" that hearing loss is going to be a lot more widespread in the future because some of us have bad habits of concerts, headphones, etc etc. (I'm guilty as charged). A lot of us are going to face it, and not everyone is going to take the bull by the horns and do something about it; in my family I've seen several people deny to the very end that they had hearing problems (to the frustration of their partners/kids).
To go get it sorted out of consideration for your lovely spouse makes you a superstar.

Tereza Okava wrote:
...I've seen several people deny to the very end that they had hearing problems (to the frustration of their partners/kids).
To go get it sorted out of consideration for your lovely spouse makes you a superstar.

This really is a THING, and could be problematic, for us. John's first wife is a 'mumbler', something I've heard from both him and their kids. But, he asked her to repeat herself so often that she convinced him it was his hearing, not her speech, that was the problem - and sent him to a hearing aid dispenser. He bought them, and still heard her as all mumbles, so he got rid of them. But, in the years since, he's attended many concerts, listens to heavy metal, at near-full-volume, has worked in very loud pro kitchens, and is now insisting that my auditory overwhelm is the whole problem(I'll own part of it), rather than his need for higher and higher volume. I find myself frequently needing to leave the room, or even the house, at times, to escape it, before it sets off severe headaches, but I'm afraid to recommend testing, because of his reactions to any mention of his possible hearing decline. I guess when he finally hits the need for full volume,  and it's still not loud enough, and he can't hear the birds & goats, maybe that will be what gets him to go...

Carla Burke wrote: I find myself frequently needing to leave the room, or even the house, at times, to escape it, before it sets off severe headaches...

For Christmas a few years ago, I got quality Noise Cancelling Headphones. They're actually designed to let speech sounds through, and remove other octaves more severely. In situations with background noise, I can actually comprehend speech *better* with them on! There are in the ear protectors that are specifically for going to concerts, but my ear canals are too small for anything of that type.

I sleep with earplugs, but he gets offended, if I wear them during the day. I have to wear the noise canceling headphones, if I want to hear anything other than what he's blasting. Unfortunately, his vocal volume is also increasing, at about the same rate.

Get thyroid checked. Hearing loss, especially with tinnitus and/or that feeling of "water in the ears" is a flaming redflag.

Do entire thyroid panel; TSH alone is not useful. The important number is FreeT3; it needs to be in the upper third of the range for most people to be entirely well.

Thyroid decline (specifically, slow loss of the ability to convert T4 to T3) is documented in the literature as the primary cause of most of what we think of as "symptoms of aging" -- but this information has not trickled down to most of the medical profession.

Voice of experience: among other issues, my hearing had gone to crap. With optimal (not just "adequate") thyroid treatment, I hear as well as ever, and the noise and congestion went away.

My teenage son went in for a concussion evaluation almost 2 years ago and the doc told him he had impacted wax in his ears and to do the OTC drops (like debrox) then go in for cleaning. We didn't do that. When he was traveling for months recently, his hearing worsened though and we started working at a solution when he got home. There's a youtube video of a doctor conducting an experiment with ear wax in different solutions to see what breaks it up best. Oil did nothing (good for infections, not wax), hydrogen peroxide based things were okay but the best by far is warm water.

We bought a gizmo that sprays water in the ear that helped but it's messy and the water needs refilled often. We finally went to the doctor and I thought they would put on a fancy scope and scoop it out. They used a huge plastic syringe with a special tip on the end and warm water. A special designed cup fit under the ear perfectly to limit mess. She flushed with about 3 quarts in one ear and less in the other. My son was astounded that he could hear himself breathing, hear the air in the seat cushion, and was easily distracted outside by all the new sounds. It was dramatic! We'll hang on to the Wush ear washer because the syringe method, though much cheaper, is a two person job.

Glad your son got some relief! That is me, I regularly have wax issues if I don't keep on top of it after having those horse-syringe-in-the-doctor's-office moments you described!
I keep the drops on hand and use them every so often, and then use a baby nose-sucker syringe with warm water to irrigate (it's what I have around here, lol).
You mentioned him traveling. For me air travel is almost always a catalyst for an ear event: nowadays because I wear earplugs and earbuds for long periods while I'm traveling now (between long-haul flights, noisy places I stay, etc), but in the past when I didn't use the earplugs it was a problem too. I definitely do my cleaning protocol in the week or so before I fly, if not I often find myself with an ear infection not long afterward.

When my sister was little she had the impacted earwax problem. Doc said gently wash her ears out with warm water as needed, so that happened once a week for about a year (just bent over the kitchen sink), then the problem went away. But it's sure an easy fix when that's all that's wrong!

There are two kinds of ear wax; one is soft and usually melts and runs out by itself, but the other type is more like beeswax, and can accumulate into solid plugs.

I have found a combination of a peroxide washout and laying down on a heating pad with my ear to it helps break up the wax. I have always been a wax producer so every once and a while I would have to clean them out.

If this has been a slow buildup over time, I really would recommend going to an ENT to get your ear properly cleaned. They have the tools to not only gently wash it out, but to inspect inside and confirm you have wax issues or something else.

The things I would do for a poor mans ENT scope.

Poor man's scopes exist, but they're not very good.

Good point about the impacted ear should have an initial inspection by the ENT -- because it could be a grass seed or insect causing the issue, and that needs to come out. (Grass seed can work into the brain and kill you. Really rare, but I knew a dog it happened to.)