So I've always been curious about how strongly loud music really does affect your hearing. I attended my very first rock concert, ever, 20 years ago yesterday. I saw INXS at the San Diego Sports Arena. My friend and I had fairly good seats, (we were off to the right of the stage) and as I was only 14 years old, I felt like I'd been catapulted into cooldom just by having been there. Well, the next day (20 years ago today), I noticed an interesting fuzziness in my ears. I realized it had been loud, but that just made it even cooler, right? Well, in the next four or five years, I attended many more rock concerts in many different venues--xFest, which features Sugarcubes, PIL, New Order and De la Soul; Depeche Mode and Nitzer Ebb; Nitzer Ebb by itself (I got all the way to the front of the crowd and touched the guy's boots), the Cult; the Cure; the Cure and Love and Rockets; PIL and Flesh for LuLu; Anthrax, Megadeth, and a group which will remain unnamed; the Dead Milkmen; and They Might Be Giants. I think I might have left out something, but it doesn't matter. The point is, I was exposed to a lot of very loud music.

Now that I'm 34, with 5 kids, I notice that I often have to ask people to repeat themselves. I mean, I can hear fine, but I just want people to speak a little louder. So my good father-in-law gave me a hearing test and determined my left ear has a mild-to-moderate loss in the lower frequency area. He even gave me and over-the-ear Oticon hearing aid. Husband developed a cool website, http://www.understandhearing.com/, where I can take a hearing test and then have the results, as shown below. What I'm curious about is if my results are typical at all of people who have had a similar exposure to loud music. My dad has a slight hearing loss, but my mom's hearing is near-perfect.

I have also heard that pregnancy contributes to hearing loss but I'm not clear as to whether that is temporary or permanent.

I think it would be an interesting experiment to note one's hearing before and after attending a loud event, and then check it again in maybe a month or so, to see if there is an noticeable effect. My rock concert going days are over, though, as now I 'm much more interested in seeing a symphony perform Debussy's Fetes. The last classical performance I attended (besides Beulah's middle school orchestra concert) was Handel's Messiah. And that really wasn't very loud. The last loud event that I've attended was a Monster Truck rally. (Don't ask why) and I wore earplugs, left early, and won't ever go again. So it's an experiment for someone else I guess. Well, Goose is making loud noises from the kitchen (can hear those just fine, thank you very much). So off I go.