New subject: don't know where else to put this, but I want those who know me to know about this: I experienced a self-inflicted hearing problem during Thanksgiving Day 2019, in which I shot my new The Judge but forgot to wear ear protection and compounded that by having my hearing aids in. It has produced two problems:
- In a certain range that includes higher-frequencies of the human vocal range, those sounds, including many female voices, now sound a bit like chipmunks to me. This was pronounced when it was first occurring and did not let up at all for months, until I discovered an unconventional treatment for it online (the treatment is legally questionable, so if anyone wants to know what it was, they'll have to talk with me privately, in person). The treatment immediately began to mitigate the problem, and now the degree to which women sound like chipmunks to me is greatly diminished.
- I thought the treatment had even more thoroughly eliminated the other problem, which was tinnitus that started out as being so loud that I could barely sleep at night, because, even though I sleep with a white noise generator to lull my insomniac self into slumber, even with the white noise generator turned to its loudest setting (even with my hearing aids in), the tinnitus was so loud I couldn't even hear the sound machine. As I did the treatments, the tinnitus decreased steadily, to the point that I had to shut off all other sources of sound in order to be able to hear it.
I began to suspect earlier in the summer, though, that the tinnitus hadn't, in fact, been cured, because I had an incident in which Kristin and I were stuck in a building for maybe a half hour with a fire alarm ringer going off -- and after we left, my tinnitus was back -- not nearly as loud as it had originally been, but maybe 1/4 that loud and certainly enough to be very annoying. After that it slowly went away, and that took about a month.
Just now I had an insight about all this that has tied together many suspicions: I was on hold on the phone with Delta Airlines this afternoon and evening for almost 5 hours. I first waited 3 hours and 40 minutes before getting a customer service rep, and at least 95% of the time while waiting I was listening to this really cool droning music that repeated every few minutes; as it went on, it began to take on a more and more complex quality that I increasingly enjoyed, and from time to time I would even think that maybe it was changing. The rep came on, though, we talked for about 10 minutes, then she had to put me on hold for "a couple minutes," and when she did the droning music came back, and a couple minutes ended up turning out to be 25 minutes.
Now it's been a couple hours since I was on the phone. I had the TV on for a little while. Conversations with Kristin and Naomi. A long discussion with Holly Hannah. And I played a You Tube video one of our brothers sent me. After all that, though, I just left off any sound source and started proofreading something I've been writing, and almost immediately it was back: the droning music. I checked my phone to see if it was still connected to the Delta call. Nope. But I could definitely hear it, and it's not like the way one 'hears' a song one can't get out of one's head over and over again. No, I am actually
hearing it -- just like I was hearing the ringing that was the tinnitus.
(And, oh no, now that I've mentioned that thing about not being to get a song out of one's head I'm hearing Different Drum" repeating over and over again like that, which has been happening ever since someone brought that up in the thread about Songs that Remind You about Poly -- I have
got to get my stereo set up in this new house so I can drive that and certain other repeaters out of my mind!)
Anyway, still hearing the droning, even along with reverie about "Different Drum."
And here's the insight. The gunshot has got my sustain pedal stuck in the on position. Any of you who have ever played the piano or the organ know exactly what I mean. I did the reverie thing just before I started writing this message to remind myself of what the droning music sounded like when I first got on hold with Delta -- and could remember: at first, the droning was just a slight sound in the background of what was predominantly a kind of funky upbeat elevator music, but as it repeated, the droning got louder and louder until it became the predominant thing I was hearing, because my sustain being stuck in the on position meant that I was still hearing the last run through layered on top of the new layer, and the droning was just the piling up of the sound until all it
was was a drone -- and what I'm hearing now in the silence of this evening is what I always hear (plagued since 5th grade hearing the 60hz of the electrical current in all the wall wiring, plus the very low level that the tinnitus has decreased to) PLUS the droning exactly as it was at the
end of the time I was on hold.
This is going to have ramifications in how I manage talking with people. I'm really going to have to turn other sound sources off for a little bit before I engage in conversation, and that way I'm hoping I won't have to ask people to repeat things so often.
Weird, huh?
I do like the droning far more than the ringing, and it's louder.
