Friday, April 15, 2011

Good thing

I'm not a monk.

I developed tinnitus in my right ear several years ago. 24/7 high-pitched noise like the sound that old cathode ray TVs used to make. In the last year it has gotten louder.

A month or so ago, I developed what is probably stapedial muscle spasms in my left ear. This creates a set of sounds like muffled explosions or thumping, several times in fast succession. And I think perhaps I can feel the muscle do its thing.

Oops, there it went.

When they happen together, it's like having a dog whistle in one side and a distant fireworks explosion in the other.

I notice them most, of course, when there's no ambient noise. So I'm glad I'm not a monk.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The first 'cathode-ray' sound I have had at a very low, low, almost inaudible way my whole life. One early memory is of trying to get everyone in my family to be very quiet for a minute so I could try whether they could also hear that sound.

An odd bit of Japanese linguistic whatnot -- the 'sound effect' word in cartoons/manga for a situation of nobody being in a room you enter, and nothing going on there, is "shiiiiiiiin". The sound of nothing? I asked a friend from Hokkaido once what the origin of such a thing could be, and he thought it was that faint high-pitched buzz you hear when there's nothing else to hear...

As for the second sound, I've sometimes gotten a sound in one ear which I guessed to be some blocked valve unblocking. Sort of bmabmabmabmabma. I hadn't ever thought that such a thing could be a spasm, though.

Have you had the wonderous-but-creepy experience of finding your heart beating totally out of rythym and racing, and /consciously/ put it back to normal? And then put it back the first way, just to see? And then put it back to normal again?

--Nathan

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...