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Kathleen O'Brien/The Star-Ledger By Kathleen O'Brien/The Star-Ledger


on May 06, 2014 at 7:00 AM, updated May 06, 2014 at 7:24 AM

Chekesha Ellis knows folks have heard what can happen when people become addicted to prescription pain pills.
Trouble with the law. Marriage problems. Financial ruin.
While Ellis managed to steer clear of most of those, her opiate addiction exacted a different toll: It turned her stone cold deaf. Permanently deaf.
So deaf she’d never heard her toddler’s voice until she received a cochlear implant last fall.
With prescription painkillers now causing more accidental overdoses nationally than heroin and cocaine combined, doctors are only now starting to examine how opiates damage hearing.
Ellis, 42, of the Burlington County town of Willingboro, was a healthy, gainfully employed 28-year-old when she had knee surgery for a torn meniscus in 1999. She was prescribed a narcotic painkiller for her recovery.
From that unremarkable start, Ellis said she soon turned into a woman whose daily routine revolved around acquiring her next stash of pills. She said she "doctor-shopped" in at least three states, convincing multiple doctors to prescribe painkillers at the same time for her knee — even though her knee was no longer painful.
"The chase," as she calls it in her blog, wasn’t to get high, or to feel anything close to physical pleasure. It was purely to avoid the horrid sensations of withdrawal. And that chase went on for years, she said.
But because she managed to scrape together the money to buy her perfectly legal drug of choice, she flew under society’s radar.
"You’d never think to look at me that I was a full-fledged drug addict," she said. "Every pill I took was from a pharmacy."
Her body responded to the addiction with many oddities, she said. She stopped yawning. Stopped sneezing. Her libido vanished, she said. And five years ago, over the space of six months, her hearing failed.
Her family physician was the first to blame her hearing problem on her pain medication. Although he’d written her countless refill prescriptions over the years, he balked once she told him of her hearing loss.
"He said, ‘Ms. Ellis, I cannot write another script for you. That’s why you’re going deaf.’ "

Chekesha Ellis knows folks have heard what can happen when people become addicted to prescription pain pills.
Trouble with the law. Marriage problems. Financial ruin.
While Ellis managed to steer clear of most of those, her opiate addiction exacted a different toll: It turned her stone cold deaf. Permanently deaf.
So deaf she’d never heard her toddler’s voice until she received a cochlear implant last fall.
With prescription painkillers now causing more accidental overdoses nationally than heroin and cocaine combined, doctors are only now starting to examine how opiates damage hearing.
Ellis, 42, of the Burlington County town of Willingboro, was a healthy, gainfully employed 28-year-old when she had knee surgery for a torn meniscus in 1999. She was prescribed a narcotic painkiller for her recovery.
From that unremarkable start, Ellis said she soon turned into a woman whose daily routine revolved around acquiring her next stash of pills. She said she "doctor-shopped" in at least three states, convincing multiple doctors to prescribe painkillers at the same time for her knee — even though her knee was no longer painful.
"The chase," as she calls it in her blog, wasn’t to get high, or to feel anything close to physical pleasure. It was purely to avoid the horrid sensations of withdrawal. And that chase went on for years, she said.
But because she managed to scrape together the money to buy her perfectly legal drug of choice, she flew under society’s radar.
"You’d never think to look at me that I was a full-fledged drug addict," she said. "Every pill I took was from a pharmacy."
Her body responded to the addiction with many oddities, she said. She stopped yawning. Stopped sneezing. Her libido vanished, she said. And five years ago, over the space of six months, her hearing failed.
Her family physician was the first to blame her hearing problem on her pain medication. Although he’d written her countless refill prescriptions over the years, he balked once she told him of her hearing loss.
"He said, ‘Ms. Ellis, I cannot write another script for you. That’s why you’re going deaf,’ " she recounted. Her initial response? She kept popping pills and got a hearing aid.
It was when her hearing aid battery died in the middle of the night that she realized she was completely deaf. Eventually, even hearing aids couldn’t help.
Three years ago she finally endured a brutal withdrawal and once clean, she said, she sought help for her deafness.
The cochlear implant team at University Hospital, Newark, was mindful of her addiction history when they considered surgery for her. After all, it would involve anesthesia and probably some pain medicine. Would that trigger a relapse?
Audiologist Nicole Raia said that risk weighed on her mind. "My concern was: If we give her a cochlear implant, then she starts to use drugs again, we’ve haven’t really helped her. We’ve just allowed her to hear," she said.
Ellis’ surgeon, Robert Jyung, director of Otology/Neurotology at University Hospital, said he soon realized those worries were unfounded in her case.
"Anyone with a history of substance abuse or addiction of any kind does make you think twice," he said. "They’re actually concerned about not getting re-addicted. They want you to promise them that you’re not going to put them on any narcotic painkillers."
Ellis’ wariness about the prospect of re-addiction told Jyung she was fully recovered and on guard against a relapse.
Jyung said there a few theories about how opiates can damage hearing. Some believe the drug use lowers blood flow so that the inner workings of the cochlea — the tiny portion of the ear that converts sound waves into electrical nerve signals — aren’t properly oxygenated.
There have been cases reported in which drug abusers have lost their hearing after a night of bingeing, Jyung said. Perhaps their breathing slowed and blood pressure dropped so much the inner ear suffered from oxygen deprivation.
A cochlear implant comes close to replicating the output of that damaged structure.
It’s impossible to predict how patients will respond to the implant, and the outcome is not entirely in their control, said both Raia and Jyung.
Ellis turned out to be a star patient. Her brain could comprehend speech right away, which isn’t always the case, Raia said. It helps that she had hearing through most of her adult life, then wore hearing aids.
"She had a lot of things going for her," said Jyung, her surgeon. "She’s a good lip-reader, obviously intelligent, highly motivated. She’s fun to deal with. She’s outgoing and positive."
Ellis relied on only Tylenol after her surgery last November.
Since then, she said she’s been enjoying all the sounds that come her way: Her 2-year-old son, Hyuston, a cellphone call from her mother — She hadn’t been able to use a cellphone for five years.
She even showers while still wearing her cochlear microphone tucked under two shower caps so she can hear the running water.
That daylong torrent of rain last week? She said she enjoyed hearing it so much it actually made her weep.
She’s doing some writing about her experience now, and has a new blog: chasenomore.org. Her goal is to find a way to shout this from the rooftops: "If you abuse opiates, you can lose your hearing, plain and simple."