Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Life and deaf.

I woke up last week and couldn’t hear out of my left ear. It wasn’t totally deaf. It was more like trying to listen to the world with the the left side of your head submerged in two feet of water. It was bearable, but pretty inconvenient.  I toughed it out, hoping it would go away. Just like most of my hopes, it didn’t come true.

After a few days, I couldn’t take the half-hearing anymore and went to see a doctor. My bet was on an infection. Maybe a tumor. Possibly that one thing where you have a parasitic twin growing inside of you and didn’t even know it. But alas, it was nothing so dramatic. It was simply an excessive build up of ear wax. And I actually had it in both ears.

He went after the less-clogged right ear first. In went his tweezers and out came the huge mass of wax. It was a half-inch long. I didn’t even know there was that much room in my ear deeper than the reach of my pinkie. When he moved on to my left ear, he couldn’t even tweeze it out.  He had to spend 30 minutes washing it out with a syringe and hot water. After a half-hour of enjoying a high-pressure stream against my ear drum, he managed to flush it clean. By the end, the wash basin had bits and chunks of ear debris floating in it and reminded me of a finished bowl of oatmeal filled with water and left in the sink to soak.

I guess I probably shouldn’t have waited 27 years to get my ears cleaned.

Now hearing is a totally different experience. I’ve grown so used to having half an inch of crap between me and the world that now nothing sounds the same. Everything is crisper. Fuller. Louder. It’s like I’ve suddenly gained the super-hearing of Superman.

Unfortunately, the invulnerability of Superman didn’t come with it. When everything is five times louder, it fucking hurts.

Air ducts sound like vacuum cleaners. Water faucets sound like fire hoses. That girl who sits behind me at work and laughs all the time sounds like a flock of ducks in a jet engine.

It makes me wish I had earplugs.

Too bad I had my all-natural ones removed.