Well solved, sort of. I have suffered from Meniers for many many years as it started for me in the 1990's & is still giving me strife today, just to make it fun I also suffer from MAV (diagnosed because of information on this site) & I am fairly sure recently also BPPV but that hasn't been diagnosed (or even talked about) yet.... luckily I have also gone in & out of remission over that time which can last for years sometimes (well remission from the big symptoms like vertigo & feeling totally rubbish etc., the small ones like tinnitus & varying deafness day too day & never knowing how you are going to feel when you wake up are always there). (For those interested below is a link to an 'unintentionally long' message I wrote about my journey to that stage quite a few years back.) Just introducing myself Anyways onto what I was going to say... Hearing TV & music has been a challenge for me for quite a few years as I was pretty well deaf in my right ear & reduced hearing in my left ear, but I could get away without needing hearing aids for normal stuff for years. For TV I had a volume controlled amplified speaker pointing at my left ear & my wife sat on my left & at right angles too me so she didn't get too much amplified sound going her way but after we moved houses her chair is now beside mine & she sits on my left so a speaker pointing at my right ear also blasts her as well. After fighting this for a while I went looking & ended up buying a set of Digitech wireless volume controlled rechargeable headphones & while not perfect are a huge amount better than either blasting my wife with sound or me not being able to hear TV programs/music & having a volume control on my head is perfect when you have varing hearing day for day. I have used them for a number of years now & having the base station on the table beside my chair makes charging easy as they just live on it when I am not using them, also their wireless range is huge as I can wear them (to listen to music) when I am working on my computer & my PC is located right at the other end of our house to the base unit, I have also used them outside without an issue. About six or so months ago I went to bed able to hear & woke the next morning pretty well deaf in both ears not just one!!... that was a huge shock I can tell you & even an ear wax removal didn't help the situation. Of course that started getting hearing aids for me in motion (interestingly I already had a hearing appointment booked so things were already underway) but getting anything done when it comes to non life threatening medical things takes ages & ages, in the meantime I mostly couldn't hear the TV, so I went looking for a small cheap amplifier & bought a Digitech 19Wx2RMS one I (after some DIY) I hooked it up before my headphones base station & low & behold I could hear TV/music again, OK so it is cranked right up & it also has an annoying power hum but..... (I have ordered a different brand 80Wx2 amp today to see how it goes) Interestingly this also had a flow on affect, after I got my hearing aids I found out how poor the sound from them is & even though I can hear TV with them understanding what is being said is a totally different thing therefore I still just use my headphones (after removing my hearing aids as the headphones over the aids just doesn't give clear sound) to listen to TV & music. But one thing that did happen was initially my audiologist pretty much ruled out a proper hearing aid for my meniers affected ear & just supplied a crossover aid at first. In my second or third appointment I pointed out I could hear some stuff nice & clear with my right ear when using my headphones for TV so she gave me a trial full aid for that ear as well & the difference overall to hearing clarity is bigger than huge. Hope this in some way helps someone else in our situation.
Geez, your story is so similar to mine, it's eerie. I too have one dead ear and one that was carrying the load with no big problem until I woke up one morning so deaf I couldn't even hear my own voice! Now it fluctuates but the trend is a downward slope. CROS hearing aids help on the not too bad days. I use the closed captions on the TV. I'm looking into solutions for when I am totally deaf. One thing that I may have to resort to is Speech to Text software. Otter on the iPhone is quite remarkable.
Yeah that one was a revelation to me I didn't even realise you hear your own voice & used that to set the volume you speak at. Text to voice is something that is on my to do list, but not quite at the moment as long as I can get away with being able to hear at least the TV I can survive