Anybody ever heard of ‘conductive hearing loss’? It’s the kind of hearing loss that occurs when fluid or something else is creating blockage within your ear. (This is opposed to nerve hearing loss, which is a whole different ballgame.) I’m interested in conductive hearing loss today because 1) I’m experiencing it and 2) there’s nothing in there. I seem to be having the symptoms with no obvious cause. At 9:00 yesterday morning, my ear started ringing, and by 11:00 the ringing was practically all I could hear. People with advanced degrees don’t know why.

The doctor’s advice, after an hour and a half of tests? “Hmmm. Wait a couple of days, and we’ll see if it’s gotten any worse.” Rock! I’ll be looking for your bill.

I’ll give this much to him: it seems to have improved since yesterday. Sometimes it sounds like the world blew a speaker, but today I can have phone conversations with the left ear, although when I dial parts of the tones are… missing. It’s like they’re harmonizing with what they should sound like. I bet that ringtone that only kids can hear would work on me really, really well now.

While the ‘wait and see’ treatment has been effective, it also has certain side effects including anxiety, depression, loss of appetite, hypochondria, and psychotic irritation with loud ringing noises.

As I get old, I have a morbid thought every once in a while. Almost everyone I know is more or less healthy and happy; there aren’t people with more than one errant prescription, and nobody’s doctor has forbidden them from eating a specific Kryptonite food. Still, sometimes I look at the old man at the bus stop with a cane and one eye and think, “For a good 35, 40 years, that guy was just like me. Lived a normal life, nothing wrong with him, and then one day he turned a corner and he was Bluebeard.” So occasionally I will wonder: is one of those things around the corner for me? What will my thing be? Today, I’m thinking, “Maybe I go deaf. Maybe that’s where it starts.” You just don’t know.