Part III
After seeing my audiogram, I instantly recognized that the pulsitile tinnitus could not be my main problem, but a symptom of something greater. What could come next? Internet searches on hearing loss and tinnitus brought up a myriad of responses from quack cures, health related bulletin boards, and medical journals. I would spend the next two weeks concentrating on the other note scribbled on the audiogram form, “SHL.”
The tears started to flow spontaneously, as one of my great joys in life was the phenomenon of hearing, especially surround and stereo sound mixes. I had purchased hundreds of libraries of sounds recorded to Compact Disc, Apple iTunes, amazon.com Music, and Google Play tracks. I had dual sophisticated 2.1 and 5.1 channel home theaters with Nakamichi and Yamaha Receivers with Vandersteen and all identical JBL speakers, including the surrounds. I had conditioned AC power and speaker cables the size of bananas with perfect copper single crystal conductors. I only ripped my CD library to the highest bitrate possible MP3 or AAC files, since I could hear the difference between the compressed format and original. I did not make it out to the symphony that often, but when I did, I relished in the instruments creating sound without amplification. I would consider myself a sound snob.
I stopped listening to CD’s, the radio, traveling in crowds, visiting stores with canned music soundtracks, and sought the silence of my crawlspace. In the 22″ cramped cold space between the ground and the raised floor, all I could hear was my damn brain’s gushing blood flow through who knows what artery or vein. I was alone in my own personal maelstrom, with no one to share its agony.
The audiologist referred me to see an otolaryngologist, to see if my problem could be medically related. My appointment would not be for another week. I now had some information, and all the possible illnesses were not good but included Ménière’s disease, acoustic neuroma, or hereditary deafness. I needed more information, and surely our advanced medical arsenal would proffer a solution.