Eh??? What did you say?

Here's more proof that I'm falling apart. Friday I got a call on my cell phone and when I answered it, it sounded like a teeny weeny little electronic fair speaking from the phone through a one inch pipe from about a mile away and I couldn't understand what was being said. I thought something was wrong with my phone, so I decided that I had no choice, I had to get a new phone. This happened one more time and so I was just about to hang up, but as I was closing the phone I could hear someone talking for real so I put it to my other ear and that's when I found out that something was wrong with my left ear, not my phone. I can't really hear anything from my left side. I went to the doctor thinking I had wax or something blocking my ear, and he said there was nothing there so he sent me to the ENT Dept. I had a hearing test and she said that I had a significant hearing loss in my left ear. Da! So she sent me right in to see the ENT doctor. He said that the hearing loss could be caused by a virus so he put me on Prednizone which is an awful medicine with awful side effects. I have to take it for a week and come back and see if there is any improvement with a new hearing test. If there is improvement, I will have to take it for another week, if not, they will take me off of it. He said that it could be caused by an Acoustic Neuroma which is a very slow growing tumor. So I also have to schedule an MRI to see if that could be a possibility. One other symptom is the deaf ear has a loud constant ringing which is very annoying. If there is a lot of noise around me I don't hear the ringing so much, but when it is quiet, the ringing is deafening. I'll keep you posted. I go back to ENT on this coming Tuesday, the 5th. Could I be getting Old? My mind says NO WAY. My Body says get used to it.