MTV Reality Show Star Undergoes Surgery After Losing Her Hearing

Former MTV personality Lo Bosworth recently revealed that she underwent inner-ear surgery after losing her hearing.

In a recent Instagram post, the Laguna Beach and The Hills star opened up about the struggles she had post-surgery and what led to her health woes in the first place.

“So, I have otosclerosis,” she explained. “Which means that the tiny little bones in my inner ear have fused together and, for sound to be sound, those bones have to vibrate and not to be fused together.”

Bosworth then said that she experienced significant hearing loss over the past few years because of the condition, and it “got way worse” during her pregnancy with daughter Nelle.

“My ENT [doctor] told me it was going to get worse in pregnancy, but oh my gosh, oh boy, did it get way worse in pregnancy,” she continued. “I’ve been wearing hearing aids, the whole deal, but you can get surgery for otosclerosis. It’s called a stapedectomy, and I was under the assumption a little, tiny ear surgery was going to be not a big deal.”

The former reality TV star, who had prosthetic stapes implanted, described the first 24 hours of post-op as “pretty rough.”

“They put you under general anesthesia for a stapedectomy because they need you to be perfectly still, and I think waking up from general anesthesia can be really tough,” she pointed out. “It was really tough for me yesterday, my blood pressure was really low afterwards, so [doctors] were really worried.”

Bosworth noted that as her medical team worked to increase her blood pressure, she felt dizzy and nauseous.

“I felt awful. I had a really rough last night coming on,” she recalled. “The biggest thing when you have inner ear surgery is that all of your balance can go wonky for a couple days … while you recover because the fluid in your inner ear is all out of whack or something and there’s so many tiny nerves in your inner ear that affect your taste and just how you experience the world.”

Regarding other side effects she’s experienced, Boswroth said, “Every time I close my eyes I get vertigo. I have to sit for a minute with my feet on the floor to try to get the liquid in my inner ear to balance because then I have to hold onto the walls when I’m walking because I’m so dizzy and have vertigo.”

Although she continues to deal with the aftermath of her surgery, Bosworth remains optimistic about the surgery’s success.

She then added that she was “trying to improve” her lifestyle “pretty dramatically.”