10/12/2025 (start) – No Help for Music (yet)

 

A couple days ago, I hit an emotional pothole on my hearing journey.

In the end, the whole debacle is probably my own fault, as I made the idiotic decision to try getting my music back with a complicated effort in research and pleading and bargaining (see “grief”), all to (yet) no avail.

Here are the things I’ve tried so for (prior to hitting that emotional pothole – more on that in a bit).

1.      Online search to try to figure out what the hell my problem is called in professional circles (questionable result)

2.      Visiting Kaiser Audiology (a happy coincidental routine appointment)

3.      Test driving a couple of apps that Googledy AI (whatever they call it now) recommended without any understanding of my specific issue. Fuck large language models.

Result: A short but deep dive into that pothole of hopeless depression (all better now).

Here’s a short (recent only) history (because it could be read elsewhere on this blog) of my nearly lifelong hearing saga might be helpful.

Most of us, (?) if we’ve been paying attention, are aware that somewhere in the time zone of 2019/2020 I had my 2^nd round of COVID which nearly completely dusted my hearing and comprehension in my good (left) ear. Like any good miserable snot-filled respiratory illness, I expected the silly ear thing to resolve itself in a few days like it did the first time.

·       It didn’t resolve itself in a few days.

·       It didn’t resolve itself in a few weeks.

·       It didn’t resolve itself in a few months.

·       It’s not resolved as I write, several years later.

Happily, despite that ongoing issue, I’m doing pretty well these days in the hearing and comprehension department via my bitchin’ hearing aid (left) and cochlear implant (right).

But…

From that 2019/2020 peg all the way to the now peg:

·       Music

·       Is

·       Gone

Piping music into the left ear (equipment or not) at any reasonable volume produces one of two effects:

·       If the music has any sort of harmony in it (i.e. multiple instruments or voice sounds), all I hear is trashy, static distorted atonal annoying crap.

·       If the music has only one “voice” to it (a pure tone) I hear a slightly distorted “voice” and tonal progression (intervals) of maybe a few microseconds difference in pitch. Meaning no real intervals at all, so no detectable tune.

 

The cochlear implant (right ear, bless its little cochlear heart) can’t give me intervals either – not its fault – but it won’t make that trashy, static, etc. noise, so that’s uh, nice.

 

At this writing, there appears to be no help at all available to fix that. There’s a worse problem though. Based on the attempts listed above, I did repeatedly find a single reference without any optional diversions of pop-diagnosis for my problem:

You, Paul, have suffered a stroke. That is, unbeknownst to you or anyone in your insanely large Kaiser “care team,” you have suffered a stroke. Your brain is damaged (we kinda knew that part anyway).

So, who’s on first, doctor-wise?

The recommendation (See Large Language Model again) is a neurologist.

Of course it is! Our brain is damaged! Our ears are just fine.

COVID (I guess) has damaged our brain!

I guess there are worse things that could damage my brain.

My primary care doctor suggested I talk to the surgeon who did the implant surgery, which sort of makes sense. So, I sent that message and got an amazing reply back, chock full of detailed info that in summary translated to, “…well yeah, if you had a stroke, you’re fucked, and if you didn’t have a stroke, you’re fucked”.

Meanwhile a bunch of very dear friends have suggested that since I’m effectively barred from the typical musical appreciation class, I could still get my musical jollies on (somewhat) by feeling that good old bass bottom bounce thing bottom bass bouncing. After all, lots of deaf people have pretended to enjoy “the beats,” and I get that.

While I am profoundly grateful that I have such good and helpful friends who really want to be good and helpful, for my particular hearing situation, there are a few problems with this approach:

1.      I’m not entirely deaf (particularly with the head-embedded stuff above) – a bad thing in this scenario.

2.      All bottom feeder bass sounds going into the slightly functional left ear sound very much like my cat purring – embedded equipment or not (the penetrating nature of bass sounds). In other words, very distorted and utterly impossible to ignore (lucky cat).

3.      Paul’s musical history (quite extensive listening and playing – both), precludes the enjoyment of boom and boom again sans the remaining 500-20,000 Hz range. And “feeling it” aside, I still can’t ignore the “noise.”

4.      BTW, earplugs don’t block much boomy bass (in case you were wondering).

The most compelling issue for my particular soundscape situation is that nothing – and I mean nothing that I hear these days is done through my ears. Wait, what? I “heard” you thinking that. By “ears” I mean, “…do your ears hang low, do they wobble to and fro?” – the things on the outside of my head. Those aren’t very useful these days, except that they conveniently hold the hearing aid and the implant processor on my head.

Ok, if you’re not a boomer, here’s the old park ranger led campfire song:

Do your ears hang low?

Do they wobble to and fro?

Can you tie them in a knot?

Can you tie them in a bow?

Can you throw them over your shoulder

Like a continental soldier?

Do your ears hang low?

 

Most of the time I do all of my hearing electronically.

The tiny electronic things on my head don’t vibrate the floor at all.

So, no vibrating floor, no pretend enjoyment for Paul. Not to mention I live in a house with three other guys and a cat. If I could (somehow) feel it, so can they. Not so good.

 

******** Update 12/2/2025 ********

So, since the last keyboard tickling above, things have moved along somewhat significantly ala the Kaiser neurology department (or whatever Kaiser calls these things). Just the other day, I had an MRI so doctorly people can peer inside my brain and hunt for short-circuits in there (be it a stroke or just a random jelly jiggle). This was after I bitched at anyone in aforementioned “care team” who would listen – thus I got an MRI appointment for 11/26/2025. On the appointed date, I rushed as fast as a walker/bus rider could and headed (with some help) to the Kaiser MRI section of the basement.

If you’ve never had an MRI, I won’t bore you with the details, but in general, it’s a surrender of all of your electronic and magnetic attractors (I have a  shit-ton of those) so the big old MRI magnet (the “M” in MRI) doesn’t’ rip all that crap off your body without any concern for your physical integrity. Then you get shoved into a tube that is the definition of claustrophobia for anybody inclined to that. I’m not so inclined so no worries there.

And, despite the fact that I’m hearing impaired, I got the full (though reasonably attenuated) experience of the “Scree, clunk, clunk, zigga zagga waba grrrrrrrrrr clunk b b b tick tick zord zonk, etc.” noises for about ten minutes that seemed like 30.

Done and dusted, I went home none the worse for wear – other than the usual travel related exhaustion. I didn’t expect to hear anything from Kaiser on the test results very soon, but surprisingly, it was only a few days later that I got an email with the link to same. I perused that document for anything resembling a problem in the brainy brain. Being not even a backyard rocket science neurologist, most of it made no sense to me, so it’s possible that they couldn’t find a brain in there at all. I expect (maybe) there’ll be an official appointment to discuss the results but I’m still waiting at this  point.