Do You Hear What I Hear?

Do You Hear What I Hear?

I hear music, mighty fine music
The murmur of a morning breeze up there
The rattle of the milkman on the stair…

That’s my favorite melody
You, my angel, phoning me – Ella Fitzgerald, I Hear Music

I’m dropping my pen on the desktop, and it’s a making a satisfactory “thunk” sound. Subsequent footsteps followed by a door closed a little too heartily. I think I just regressed 43 years and am having way too much fun experiencing something a grown adult might take for granted. That is, my hearing. You see, for the last 10 years, I have slowly been losing hearing in both of my ears due to otosclerosis, which appears to run in my family. Consequently, sounds like rain falling, storm clouds thundering, cat’s purring, and the wind blowing have basically faded from the aural tapestry of my surroundings. Simple conversations have been challenging and usually involve a fair amount of lip reading. Concomitant with this hearing loss was a loud cacophony of tinnitus noises mainly evident in one ear, resulting in even more difficulty understanding what someone was saying.

After several years of my incomprehension annoying everyone greatly (or at least I think it did), I visited an audiologist and began wearing hearing aids. It takes a little time to adjust to the sudden increase in sounds, so the audiologist gave me an adjustment period before turning the volume up to the prescribed levels. This solution worked fine for a few years. Modern day hearing aids have some really cool features. For example, I can Bluetooth my iPhone to them using a Plantronics slider. I can also adjust the hearing aid settings to better experience music. If you have read my previous post, then you understand why I appreciate that feature. (In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if my hearing aids settings weren’t permanently stuck there).

Soon, though, I noticed that my hearing was declining again. Conversations were nearly impossible without seeing the speaker’s mouth. Frankly, if I took out my hearing aids, I could easily fall asleep with my husband’s band practicing in the next room. My audiologist recommended that I visit a specialist, who re-examined the pattern of my hearing loss and discussed various options. Ultimately, I ended up having a surgery called a stapedectomy. Basically, the surgeon operates on one ear through the canal using an operating microscope. A portion of the stapes (part of the bone structure in the middle ear responsible for conducting sound) is removed and replaced with an artificial piston. (For further reading: http://www.surgeryencyclopedia.com/Pa-St/Stapedectomy.html). The recovery period from the surgery itself is brief but complete healing can take months.

But now I get to one of the reasons I am writing this blog: Dealing with the fear of how well the operation really went that occurs during recovery. Naturally, I had a packet of instructions on how to care for myself during this period (i.e. no lifting heavy weights, no getting water in the ear, and no air travel for a few days, etc.); however, this information does not tell you what to expect hearing-wise between surgery and packing removal. And so began my exercise in Google-Fu. I think I must have researched a dozen articles or more on all the ins and outs of stapedectomies, including a PowerPoint presentation by a UT system surgeon explaining the various methods to conducting the surgery, the outcomes, and the possible complications. Now why, you ask, did you not simply ask your doctor about this? I did ask questions, but I don’t really think I could have anticipated at the time exactly how I was going to feel after the operation. When there is a wad of packing in your ear, it is very difficult to assess exactly how much you can hear, especially the week after the operation, and that can be frightening.

One site that was really helpful was http://www.healthboards.com/boards/hearing-disorders/ . Basically, members of this board share their post-operative experiences. Some appear to have had a positive outcome, and some had things go wrong. The main message I took home was that during recovery, I would slowly experience changes in my hearing, and that when the packing came out I would hear a lot more. This is exactly what happened. For the first few days, the tinnitus symphony acquired a few new noises (including one that I would describe as “artificial”) but then faded. Then low tones became very prominent. Driving my car on the tollway became a rather noisy experience not unlike when I first started wearing hearing aids. I was mainly hearing people talking with my left ear, but the tones sounded a bit delayed and robotic in the repaired one. It was sort of like when EV-9D9 puts the restraining bolt on R2-D2 in Return of the Jedi. The fun part was when I listened to music. The bass was very prominent, and the midtones were strangely detuned. This brought out some interesting interpretations of such songs as Lindsey Buckingham’s Soul Drifter, where the dissonance sort of added a surreal quality to the music.

Three weeks after the stapedectomy, my doctor removed the packing. The first thing I told him was that he was talking loudly (grin). While standing outside the clinic, waiting for the car, I noticed that I could hear everyone talking and that all the sounds were very vivid, sort of like taking a black and white photograph and adding in a swath of color. My eyes teared up a bit; my husband asked what was going on. You know what? I’m fine.