Loose rivets
8th Jul 2023, 11:37
I mention now and then about my hearing, but I've just put this on Quora in the hope it might help someone avoid what has in effect destroyed my life. My wonderful NHS had worked miracles for me. I was late 70's and driving a BM twin turbo thing and walking and cycling every day. I was in the market for a Steinway. My last indulgence. Successful carpel tunnel ops and I was good to go. And then one day my hearing didn't sound right.
THIS IS ALL ABOUT GETTING TREATMENT IN '6 to 20 hours'. Everything the NHS had done for me was being destroyed by one cretin all in a few hours which he managed to stretch to weeks. This is a bit of a swan-song as it's now so bad that it's become literally intolerable. My thoughts go to Henrietta Swan Leavitt who suffered similar inner ear destruction when she was much younger than me. Hubble said she should have got the Nobel. Anyway, this is the gist in my answer :-Do something! - it must be cleared up. Given antibiotics? Were they sure it wasn’t a virus? Steroids? I was told I should have been given those. This is a message for everybody. Really, EVERYBODY. If you don’t have an ear infection, you might know someone that has, and should be DOING SOMETHING.
I had been to my GP with a muffled sound when I tapped behind either ear. The %^&%^!! told me to go and wash my ears out. He didn’t even look in my ears. If only I had known, or phoned one of the really experienced hearing shops in the nearby big town. But I didn’t. I never imagined where this was going to go.
Next day I was back to the GP with a load of printouts from the RNID (royal national institute for the deaf.) He said, the first thing we’ll get a hearing check. The hours were ticking by. I had between 6 and 20 hours it seems, and now I was delayed by going to a local shop that the practice dealt with. They gave me hearing aids. A week has gone by. The doctor, for that is what he calls himself, didn’t even know that a British hospital gives a full hearing check before you’re wheeled in to see the surgeon. When at last I was with her, she looked up and said, ‘I’m sorry.’ and a lot more, but it was all over. For the last years of my life I can not hear music at all - just a distorted mess, and it still hadn’t fully impinged on my mind just how bad this all was.
Classical piano was a large part of my life. I can’t socialise because it’s unreasonable to expect pubs, host, venues of all sorts, to sit there in silence just because I’ve walked in. So I don’t go. I’m not deaf but what I do hear is a sickening (literally) distortion of what sound there is. The sub titles on TV are a joke. Even COUNTDOWN, a programme using very bright people, seem to miss the fact the subtitles are over the words display. BBC news is typed by a two year old. Or a three bit computer.
Well, I didn’t expect to be going over that this morning, but if I can save one person from going through this . . .
THIS IS ALL ABOUT GETTING TREATMENT IN '6 to 20 hours'. Everything the NHS had done for me was being destroyed by one cretin all in a few hours which he managed to stretch to weeks. This is a bit of a swan-song as it's now so bad that it's become literally intolerable. My thoughts go to Henrietta Swan Leavitt who suffered similar inner ear destruction when she was much younger than me. Hubble said she should have got the Nobel. Anyway, this is the gist in my answer :-Do something! - it must be cleared up. Given antibiotics? Were they sure it wasn’t a virus? Steroids? I was told I should have been given those. This is a message for everybody. Really, EVERYBODY. If you don’t have an ear infection, you might know someone that has, and should be DOING SOMETHING.
I had been to my GP with a muffled sound when I tapped behind either ear. The %^&%^!! told me to go and wash my ears out. He didn’t even look in my ears. If only I had known, or phoned one of the really experienced hearing shops in the nearby big town. But I didn’t. I never imagined where this was going to go.
Next day I was back to the GP with a load of printouts from the RNID (royal national institute for the deaf.) He said, the first thing we’ll get a hearing check. The hours were ticking by. I had between 6 and 20 hours it seems, and now I was delayed by going to a local shop that the practice dealt with. They gave me hearing aids. A week has gone by. The doctor, for that is what he calls himself, didn’t even know that a British hospital gives a full hearing check before you’re wheeled in to see the surgeon. When at last I was with her, she looked up and said, ‘I’m sorry.’ and a lot more, but it was all over. For the last years of my life I can not hear music at all - just a distorted mess, and it still hadn’t fully impinged on my mind just how bad this all was.
Classical piano was a large part of my life. I can’t socialise because it’s unreasonable to expect pubs, host, venues of all sorts, to sit there in silence just because I’ve walked in. So I don’t go. I’m not deaf but what I do hear is a sickening (literally) distortion of what sound there is. The sub titles on TV are a joke. Even COUNTDOWN, a programme using very bright people, seem to miss the fact the subtitles are over the words display. BBC news is typed by a two year old. Or a three bit computer.
Well, I didn’t expect to be going over that this morning, but if I can save one person from going through this . . .