The hearing issues (long story)

I was born a hot mess, but with fine and functional ears up until I was about 9 years old. At that time, I experienced a strange sound that didn’t seem to be coming from the cat, the dog, the TV, my mom’s radio, or a nuclear attack. It was a somewhat pure and steady tone, maybe a piccolo, but there were none of those around, so it was a mystery. It was camping out in my right ear, but my left seemed unaffected.

It was quite annoying, but I found that if I ignored it for a while, it would recede into the background or sometimes even disappear. I didn’t notice at the time, but it was accompanied by some significant hearing loss in that ear – demonstrated by routine ear testing that the grade schools did so if “Johnny” seemed a bit slow in class he wouldn’t automatically be stamped on the forehead as “Mentally Retarded” (sorry, that was the term used at the time). He might just be a tad deaf.

My mom, not at all content to let this situation pass without intense scrutiny, took me to our family physician – who was certified by my mom as a kook, but whatcha gonna do? He did the usual poking and prodding and random noisemaking and blasting of the ear with a water squirt bulb (cleaning) – and professionally proclaimed that Paul has, and I kid you not, “Early deafness.”

No kidding.

The sort of good news was we only paid $10 for that diagnosis (maybe $50 in today’s economy?)

Next comes a couple of decades of poking and prodding and testing by many professionals of all kinds, with lots of interesting diagnoses and zero improvement or suggestions beyond “Good thing you have a functional left ear!” Probably for that reason, nobody (in that period) suggested a hearing aid. I am not at all sad about that, because, as I found out later, hearing aids were still bulky boxes with a wire and an earphone (not an ear bud – think much bigger).

And meanwhile, all along the way, there was music.

I can’t remember if it was Beethoven or Bach (or both) that was pretty deaf when they were jamming musical notes together. Either way, for much of my life, I felt like a brother in arms. No, I’ve never written any music, and certainly couldn’t ever hope to. Nevertheless, music was a big part of my life from as far back as I can remember. Was.

I listened, played, sang, plucked, blew on pipes and banged on drums at various points in my musical “career.” I wasn’t the least bit picky, either, especially as I got older. I can safely declare in all honesty that any human endeavor to make a series of noises purposefully is heroic in Paul’s book. I don’t care what they use to make the noises either. Flushing ten toilets in a row with a rhythmic pattern will do it for yours truly. Good thing too – today, since that’s about all I can deal with now. (Was)

To spare the reader(?) a lot of pointless history, I’ll just skip all the way forward to December of 2022. It was about a week before Christmas, and the 2^nd round of COVID for me. Note that in this period of my life, in terms of hearing, I had gone through decades of a “really bad right ear, and somewhat impaired but functional left ear” situation. That was my hearing normal point.

My first round of COVID back in October had messed with my left (good) ear for a few days after the illness proper, but that eventually resolved with no apparent loss. Thus, in the December episode, I fully expected to recover the major loss (left ear) that COVID hit me with. Expected.

After about the 3^rd week of expecting, I accepted the conclusion that this time the loss is permanent, at least without some sort of medical intervention. So, I got some sort of medical intervention. The most impressive intervention was when my ENT (ear, nose, throat specialist) suggested a series of prednisone injections in the eardrum. Here’s a rabbit hole for your enjoyment.

I am quite uniquely fortunate to be very tolerant of pain, and pretty tolerant of strange objects placed in strange places – if it’s for a good reason. And yes, I do feel pain – I’m not one of those. If the previous paragraph didn’t send any chills up your spine, just in case you missed it – it was prednisone injections in the eardrum. Before my otologist surgeon guy suggested it, injections of anything at all in the eardrum was not a feature of my world view.

He told me it would probably not be so bad as he’d be injecting (in the eardrum) an anesthetic first. Yay!

So, we did that deal. And I can report that it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. It was, however, every bit as weird and creepy. But I understood fully that I was Princess Leia kneeling in R2D2’s video pleading “You’re my last hope, otologist!”

It was a series of 3, 1 per week. I toughed it out and had the series. And…

Nada.

I told you this would be long…

Before, and while all this was going on, I was using a very good, modern hearing aid in the left (previously good, but marginal) ear. Recall that the right ear wasn’t aided because it had been so bad for about 50 years that there was little point in pumping sound into that hole. Now the left is trash also. I still do use the hearing aid to this very day, and it really does help with my ability to understand some speech.

And as I learned then, and you will learn now, speech and music to a hearing-impaired person are not all about volume (loudness). Sure, there’s a minimum volume requirement for understanding speech or any sound. But unless there is also frequency (tonal) discernment communication is hopeless.

I think it was HAL in “2001 A Space Oddity” who said, “Something wonderful has happened!” I could be wrong, but somebody said it, and that’s all that matters.

My something wonderful was that when COVID decided to permanently trash my left hearing orifice, it didn’t just crank down the volume. It scrambled the tonal discernment wiring (or something) into a spaghetti mess. Now when music works it’s way into that ear (even with the hearing aid or a wonderful earbud) it sounds to me like an absolute trashy noise, something between a hacksaw and a fire alarm. The hearing aid itself can be (and is) configured to very tightly focus on the phonemes for speech, so they’re not too bad. Music? Nada. Was.

Enter now a suggestion from an audiologist I’d been visiting, mostly for testing, for several years. Knowing my long term and current hearing issues as she did, she thought I just might qualify for a cochlear implant (CI) on my right side, since it was bad enough that no hearing aid could possibly help it and coupled with the hearing aid in my left ear, it might just restore a lot of my hearing and comprehension abilities. Further testing would be needed, but there was a good chance I could be helped. She did point out that that since the nerve between the right ear and the brain had been functionally dormant for 40+ years, it was a shot in the dark whether the thing would light up and do its job – but it was worth that shot, we both agreed.

So, after many appointments and poking and prodding – nothing new to yours truly – I had my cochlear implant surgery scheduled for mid-August of 2023. Before I could get this schedule, I’d had to peruse a bunch of sales brochures for the various (3) companies (brands) that sell these things. Lots of positive talk, of course, and heartfelt invitations to “join the family!” Meanwhile, I spoke with my long-term and highly trusted hearing aid vendor who greatly helped me nail the choice down – there was only one company’s CI product that could link with my current hearing aid (so they could work together in sync – a pretty big deal). So, I chose that company, and the CI got implanted on my right side. The surgery itself was outpatient surgery, though I was put under general anesthesia and thus needed a ride home. The physical recovery was smooth and nearly painless.

At that point, I still had no hearing on the right side as 1) I didn’t have a processor – the external part of the CI and 2) I hadn’t had my “activation” with my audiologist (from whom I’d get the processor). The activation was a few weeks after the surgery.

CIs are weird.

That was my experience. The experience I’m still having here in November 2024. I’ve gotten used to my implant and all the work required to make not just hearing but comprehending happen. I’ve made great progress in that regard and can handle many situations with good (not perfect) comprehension – so I still consider myself hearing disabled. And there we are.

Next: https://fullyanchoredblog.blogspot.com/2024/11/balance-life-on-tightrope.html