my left ear sort-of rumbled and I heard a distinct sound of rushing water. The whole thing lasted all of maybe ten seconds and was not accompanied by any other "symptom."
Now if there is one thing I really enjoy about the internet it is my ability to run off to visit an endless number of "quacks" when experiencing even the slightest of ailments. This ear thing was just weird enough that my curiosity was piqued to the point of requiring a visit to Doctor Google.
I must confess, I did not get to the bottom of my concern because I came upon the following blog post which restored my perspective (an important quality to maintain if one is to ward off cyberspace induced hypochondria.)
Friday, January 14, 2011
The Sound of Running Water
Source: http://stephenparrish.blogspot.com/
A few days into the new year I contracted a virus and lost nearly all of my hearing in both ears. The degeneration occurred over three disheartening days, at the end of which I could only hear people if they shouted in my face.
Otherwise stifling, suffocating silence. Frustration rising to panic as I banged objects known to produce distinctive sound waves yet sharing none with me. Finally a macabre claustrophobia, the feeling of having woken up inside a buried coffin.
Sudden deafness.
As I was about to discover, however, gifts come in strange packages.
I visited an ENT doctor immediately, of course, and declaring myself an emergency, got in right away. My community of 43,000 is a medical mecca, with numerous clinics and several large hospitals. I sometimes refer to it as "the Mayo Clinic of Germany." Given that German medicine is unsurpassed to begin with, I have the best doctors in the world at my service. When your dermatologist has to schedule you around his international lecture tour, you don't need the Yellow Pages anymore.
My ENT played around with a tuning fork, said my problem would "probably" repair itself, and told me to go home and be patient.
I went home and tried to stay focused on writing and reading, activities that not only don't rely on external stimuli, they tend to dampen them. They make you forget you're deaf. But you can't write and read all the time. After a few days I was in such a panic I was nearly hyperventilating. That I would "probably" recover wasn't good enough. I wanted out of that coffin. Yesterday a friend ordered my ass back to the doctor to insist he do something.
(click "read more" to continue)
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Them All!
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