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Tag: hearing

hearing hurts

I was desperate.
I had to fix this.

Upon entering the Urgent Care center, I was anxious to get through this not knowing how long my wait would be. No one was waiting in the waiting room. It made sense after my visit ended.

After the routine check on my vital stats, I waited for about four minutes before a large, leathery doctor entered the room. Not one crack on his face showed his desire to help me. As cold as ice, this man shortly inquired about my condition. Two views into both of my ears indicated that he saw ear wax.

I followed him into another room where his nurse prepared to hold water below my ear. He mumbled for me to turn 90 degrees away from him with my right ear facing him. A nurse held a plastic box full of water below my ear. Then, as I watched his finish connecting the water pik, he slowly thrusts a cold, metal tube pretty deep into my ear.

WOOSH.
OW!!

I felt a very high pressure of water threatening to burst through my ear drum into my middle ear. The pain of such high water pressure in my ear made me cringe. Not only did it hurt, but it started messing with my other senses. I sat there, eyes shut tightly, teeth gritting, body tense. This pain was unbearable.

“Turn around,” he said.

Rinse and Repeat.
Unbearable pain, intense pressure, extreme loudness. This time, however, I looked into the water to see several pieces of ear wax, one as large as two peas. It was unbelievable that this was causing me so much discomfort.

He did this a couple of times to both my ears before we went back to the other room and verify my ears were unclogged.

“You may go,” he mumbled in a low, monotone voice.

As I walked to the waiting room, I noticed my center of balance was off. Whatever pressure was exerted to my ears had caused me to lose some balance. It was slightly simliar to being intoxicated, but luckily lasted only a couple of minutes.

This better be the first and last time I ever have to go through that. I’m now a little concerned that my ears are worse than they were before.

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listening through a tube

french kicksMy ears aren’t happy today. Last night, however, they were ecstatic. I was joined by a couple of new friends to accompany me to a French Kicks concert. We were front row, just feet away from the band. Seeing them live was great since I’m a relatively new fan of their music.

Today, however, I feel like the world is in a tube. I can hear half of what I was able to hear last night. When people talk, it sounds like my tubes are cutting out half of the timbre and tonality of their voice.  So, if there’s a lot of noise in the background, it’s not that I can’t hear the person talking. I just can’t always make out what they say.

Although these earplugs are rated well for me, Hearos branded earplugs don’t work for me as advertised. Supposedly, the rating for hearing protection with these plugs are better than standard plugs you’ll find at any drugstore, but my experience unfortunately has left me half deaf. Sadly, I’m already half deaf as it is so this is tragic. I can’t say I’m a little upset at my experience too but I really had little to no control over the situation.

I love seeing good music, I really like supporting bands by going to see them. I do not, however, like going deaf. It’s back to the cheap foam earplugs!

it’s ringing loudly inside!

Not too long ago, my ears became really stopped up. It’s either that or I’m just now noticing it. I have a condition called tinnitus and suddenly the ringing in my ears is much louder. Usually, I can mask the noise out with some fans or white noise but right now sounds around me feel a little more distant. It’s like my ears suddenly decided to stop themselves up for no reason. It’s possible that I’m on the tail end of a cold and the germs are doing this, but if it’s not that I’m not sure what’s going on! Let’s hope this clears up soon because it’s annoying and loud!

i have hearing loss

Well, it doesn’t seem like it’s normal hearing loss but in some form I have some hearing loss. It really sucks. I’ve known about hearing loss for a while but haven’t really paid attention to it until recently. Until I began studying it. Now I know too much for my good. I have to actually pay attention to the fact that I might go deaf if I’m not careful. In fact, history is against me in this case.

Just a few minutes ago, my GameCube was playing a disc that is on pause with my game Metroid Prime. Anywho, while I type here on the computer my left ear can hear the disc spinning at high speed very easily. I then turned my head and my right ear doesn’t hear the spining as well. I can hear something happening but not as much rotation happening as I can hear in my left ear.

Another test I put upon myself was to listen to a white noise generator. At normal levels, I can only hear up to about 10-11kHz in my right ear and about 13-15kHz in my left ear. The normal range of human hearing, well, at least at infancy the normal range of human hearing is 20Hz-20kHz. I don’t think I should be extremely but I should be conscious about listening to loud sounds.

The reason history is against me is because on both sides of my family, there are hearing aids and bad tinnitus. If you don’t know what tinnitus is, you’re lucky. Or you’re ignorant! Go find out here.

It’s interesting how I’m possibly going to enter into a world of music and the music industry and I’m getting less and less able to hear. Argh.

1 reply