Grey Rye didn’t notice their hearing loss until one summer day last year when they were performing a facial on a client who was chatting about the upcoming holidays. The 38-year-old esthetician was desperately trying to read the client’s lips instead of focusing on what their hands were doing.
“That’s when I first really realized, OK, this is a problem, and I need to take care of it,” Rye told BuzzFeed News.
Their first COVID infection in February 2022 was a mild coldlike illness that left them with tinnitus, or ringing, in both ears. Six months later, Rye tested positive again. They were bedridden for three days with severe muscle aches and full-body fatigue, and their chronic tinnitus got worse.
It wasn’t until a few weeks after recovering from COVID a second time that Rye noticed their left ear wasn’t picking up sounds like it used to. TV captions became a must, as well as earplugs in public to help subdue ambient noises so they could hear what others were saying.
“Everything sounds like clanging metal, almost like it’s attacking my senses,” Rye said. “If I don’t wear earplugs, I get sensorily overwhelmed because my brain is trying to process everything, and it can’t because I can’t hear.”
“It’s just wild to me, and there’s nothing else going on in my life that would cause this to happen,” Rye added. In fact, there’s an entire community of people who are experiencing the same thing — post-COVID hearing loss that doesn’t seem to have any other obvious cause.
