Tot's Kiss Leaves Mom At Hearing Loss
A Long Island, N.Y. woman was left severely hearing impaired in one ear when her four-year-old daughter greeted her with a kiss on the ear.
At first, the woman was deaf in the ear, but now some hearing has returned, but it's distorted, she says.
The woman, who lives in the town of Hicksville and wants her identify concealed, wants others to be aware that such a thing can happen, reports Early Show national correspondent Tracy Smith.
"It was a long, sucking kiss in my ear," the woman says. "I couldn't push her away. I was almost frozen. When she stopped, and the kiss ended, I realized I had no hearing in that ear. Nothing.
"I got very upset and yelled for my husband, 'I can't hear out of this ear! I can't hear!' "
Now, says Smith, she can't even hear a dial tone.
"Until that time," the woman added, "and I'd had it tested -- my hearing was perfect."
How could such a thing happen?
Audiology Professor Levi Reiter of Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y. says, "It's not the kiss. It's the suction from the kiss."
He says the loud sucking pulled her eardrum and damaged the delicate inner workings of her ear. And while Reiter could find only one other documented case, and that was from more than a century ago, he agrees with the woman that it should serve as a warning to others.
What to do, then?
"Avoid that little hole," Reiter says. "It's a big ear! Concentrate on a different part," if you give someone a buss there!
Meantime, the woman is worried because her daughter, now six, is still traumatized by what her kiss did to her mom.
Dr. Anil Lalwani, an ear specialist at NYU Langone Medical Center in Manhattan, told Early Show co-anchor Julie Chen Friday it's much more common for hearing loss to result from a slap to the ear, or having an air bag release against it, or an exposure to an explosion, or even from the pressure changes from scuba diving. He added that high noise levels can also sometimes lead to hearing loss.
Extreme pressure changes, he said, can be like "a tsunami" in the inner-ear, destroying its very delicate structures.
Steroids, other medications, perhaps even surgery, might be needed or tried in cases like this, he concluded.