Sounds Abound
June 24, 2009
Hydrangea Heaven
Note: I have Sensorineural Hearing Loss most likely as a result of my primary immune deficiency.
I’ve heard people who just got their first pair of glasses speak in awe of suddenly being able to see individual leaves on trees and such. I’ve never heard anyone speak of visual overload when putting on their glasses for the first time. It doesn’t quite work the same way with hearing aids. I’m suffering from auditory overload and I’ve only had them on for 4 hours. I’m hearing everything and everything is LOUD. Clothes brushing against my body, my own footsteps across the floor, the road underneath the moving car, the sound of a Kleenex® pulling away from its box. Things that I had forgotten make sound. My brain is confused. Paper rustling and people talking are getting the same level of attention and I’m having trouble separating out the voices from the rest, so at the moment at least, though everything is louder, I can’t really hear any better. I must relearn what background noise is and how to filter it out of my conscious mind. I can’t imagine what a truly deaf person experiences after receiving a cochlear ear implant. I’m told it takes about a week to get used to wearing the hearing aids. I’ve basically been “walking around with earmuffs on”, as the audiologist put it. I must say, I have a new understanding of the phrase “silence is golden.”
The first 24 hours:
Doctor holds up several sheets of paper by one corner and gently shakes them. I might as well have been standing next to a waterfall.
I’m handed a stack of batteries and I reach to grab my purse and slide it across the vinyl sofa and marvel that it makes a loud scratching noise as it slides.
The ambient voices I’m hearing remind me of listening to an old radio broadcast. They have that kind of a tinny, hollow, distant quality. Before I wouldn’t have even heard them. It will be interesting to see if that improves.
I walk to the bathroom before leaving the doctor’s office. I hear my footsteps and a now annoying bottle of Tylenol® that I’ve carried in my purse forever whose pills are rattling incessantly. No amount of repositioning will fix it. I think I can guess the number of pills by the sound alone. The bathroom is small and I’m alone. Good thing since my pee sounded like a pressure hose at the self-serve car wash.
I get into the car and it occurs to me that I ought to turn down the radio prior to starting the engine. I do. Quite a bit…but not enough as I jump in my seat when it comes on. I’ve left it on a local station that plays current to 1970′s fare and am greeted by Billy Joel belting out “it’s still Rock-N-Roll to me.” Since I’m familiar with this tune from before the hearing got so bad I decide I need to listen to some newer music where my mind couldn’t fill in the sound gaps with past memory as it has a tendency to do. I turn it on the Alternative Rock station. Where I learn that for the most part, my poor hearing was not the reason I couldn’t make out the song lyrics…
I make it in to work and hear all these voices as I walk down the hall and keep turning toward them thinking they might be speaking to me, since they are now as loud as when someone was actually standing right in front of me. I sit down at my desk and jump when the printer behind me starts spitting out paper. An animated conversation breaks out and it sounds like they are yelling. I want to say stop, stop! I hear every sniffle, paper crinkle, foot shuffle and computer keyboard clack.
The noise from my bag of Chex-Mix was nothing compared to the crunching of actually eating it which momentarily blotted out all other sound and made me feel like people in the next state could hear it. Now I understand why all five dogs come running at the slightest crinkle from a chip bag. I have dog hearing!
A lunch run yielded an unexpected break-through. I could actually understand the order taker at the Wendy’s drive-through. Though for some reason, she tried to add cheese to my burger when I asked for no mayo.
Nothing could have prepared me for a trip to the bathroom at work. I was affronted by a cacophony of toilet flushing, water running and automatic paper towel dispensing all reverberating from tiled walls and floor. This was too much. I nearly switched off the hearing aids.
The drive home made me worry that the car was falling apart. I could suddenly hear all kinds of engine noises where there was silence before. More music and playing with how far I could turn the volume down and still hear it.
Pulling in front of the house, the voices of all five dogs were clear and loud, though 3 of them were in the house. If I was a thief, I certainly wouldn’t break into my house.
I expected the screaming of the 2 macaws, who chime in right along with the dogs, to be ear-piercing, but their voices must be in a range high enough that my normal hearing picks up. They weren’t too much louder. The quiet Red-Bellied parrot was another story, but a pleasant one. Instead of yelling at me when I get home, he dances to get my attention. Similar to the style of a hula-dancer…big circles with his body. I knew he also made a noise when he did this, but neither my husband nor I could make it out. It now came through as a low, but clear, “Whoooooooo! Whooooooo!…long pause, more dancing….Whoooooooo! Whooooooo!” He was really getting into the dancing!
I moved some laundry into the drier, then spent the next half hour repeatedly getting up to check the door thinking the Border Collie was scratching to come in. It turned out to be the sound of clothes tumbling in the drier.
Turning on the TV nearly exploded my eardrums. The German Shepherd and Aussie decide to entertain me with world class dog wrestling and I hear dog nails scritching across the floor. The new 2 pound kitten is smack in the middle of it attacking the German Shepherd’s tail.
My husband gets home from his mini-vacation trip tomorrow and I’m anxious to see if I can hear him better.
Watching the 10 o’clock news, I play with taking one hearing aid out at a time to see what difference it makes. I’m concerned about the right-ear. It may be too far gone to be getting much help. With only that hearing aid in, I’m getting a delay. It’s like watching a movie where the sound is slightly off from the picture (and being in the bottom of a well). I’ve inadvertently learned to read lips somewhat and I can see that the what I’m hearing is not matching the lip movements.
It’s finally time to give my brain a rest from the auditory overload. Good night all.
