Friday, December 22, 2006

The World Is Alive With The Sound Of Everything

Yesterday (Thursday) I managed to get an appointment with an Ear Nose and Throat specialist in order to deploy expert measures in the quest for renewed hearing.

As I may have mentioned once or twice, I have had loss of hearing and tinitus in my left ear since the end of July, when I was laid low by an infection. Doc Rubberglove, my GP, is labouring under some demented fantasy that the whole thing is caused by an infection in my nose, and postulates some sort of tube connecting each ear with the troublesome organ. Obvious claptrap.

The ENT doctor, who bore a striking resemblance to the host of "The Daily Show" was very efficient. Eschewing the hoses, syringes, Rocket Fuel and hot water so beloved by Doc Rubberglove, he grabbed what looked like a teaspoon and simply gouged away for ten or twenty minutes while a burly technician held me down. He dug out a truly disgusting amount of wax from each ear, and remarked that it was of a peculiar red colour he'd never seen before.

I had.

We used to have four candles of that same colour, but Mrs Stevie claimed that one of them broke and had to be "disposed of" sometime around the beginning of August.

Then it was off to the sound booth to have my eardrums sonared (in order to detect fluid build-up1) and tested for hearing range. A variety of beeps and clangs were played into each ear at varying volumes, and I was asked to signal if I could hear them. I closed my eyes to prevent any visual cues being given, and the whole thing became very relaxing. I gradually entered a zen-like trance as I listened for the sounds.

Unfortunately one of the sounds was identical to the sound made by a skillet being surreptitiously withdrawn from a stack of pots and my signal that I had heard it was a loud shriek as I leapt from the chair and span into a defensive foetal huddle in one corner of the booth. It frightened the heck out of the technician who wasn't to know about certain reflexes I have developed over my 18 years of marriage.

Then back to Doc Teaspoon for the after test chat where he spoke warmly of several remote possibilities that he assured me I couldn't have, such as tumours, cankers and Benghazi Ear Rot. It was very reassuring, but I found myself reflecting wistfully on the time I couldn't hear anything during some of the more descriptive passages.

Then it was down the corridor to get Mr Elbow deathrayed. The elbow stopped working about three weeks after I began attempting to subjugate the guitar to my unique musical technique (shortly after the ear nonsense started, but I cannot conceive of a way that vile harridan Mrs Stevie could be the root cause of this ailment.

On the other hand, she did buy the guitar.

  1. Nothing was detected. I suppose I should thank heavens that Mrs Stevie would rather drink her coffee than find nefarious uses for it around a sleeping husband

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