Hiya Little Bear!! Sorry you had to find us but you'll be glad you did, there's a lot of caring people here who can help. Mandy posted some great advice about looking at the physicians link here on the ANA website. In my humble opinion, what you said about your ENT doc saying that you should hurry up and do something about your AN is a bit untrue. Your tumor is considered small, so you do have time (unless the AN is pressing into your brain, which usually doesn't happen until it gets more than 4x bigger than what you have now. And there are very very VERY few cases I have seen over the years based on other AN patient's experiences here on this forum that anyone who has had anything done will keep their full hearing. So yes, you should be concerned about your hearing but just know that unfortunately it may be compromised in some way. You do have lots of options to you (watch and wait, surgery or radiosurgery) so don't rush into this until you get all the information you can so you can make a decision. You said you were leaning towards surgery, just know that of the three that are usually done (translab, retrosigmoid and middle fossa), translab will guarantee deafness. So find someone who has done a lot of retro or middle fossa surgeries to have a good chance at preserving hearing. And don't worry, the hardest part of this whole process IS actually making the decision on what to do. Once you do that then everything will in someone else's hands! I am not a doctor, just someone who, like everyone else on here, has been through what you are going through now. Just knkow that my opinions that I stated above are only MY opinions so don't take them carved in stone. Good luck in finding someone and let us know how it goes!
Jay
