Hear No Evil

My hearing has never been good. The first big hint that my hearing was not quite up to par occurred in first grade. My teacher, a Mrs. Bell, or possibly a Miss Bell, in her wisdom had me seated at the very back of a long row of desks, across from my friend Andy Cobb. One day, clearly exasperated with the behavior of the class, she announced that the very next person who spoke would get a paddling. I did not understand her, so I leaned across the aisle and whispered “Andy, what did she say?” “GEORGE BATTEN!” came the roar from the beast that was Mrs. or Miss Bell. I spent the next several minutes unsuccessfully arguing that I should not be paddled because of my hearing. Subsequently I was whacked several times on the palm of my hand with a wooden ruler. From that moment on I had no respect for that woman. She did teach me one valuable life lesson: life is not fair.

I am quite sure that my hearing loss took a serious turn for the worse during the late 1960s and early 1970s. I had a massive, allegedly portable, vacuum-tube-filled stereo system that my father “fixed up” for me. (I have that system to this day, though I haven’t used it in many years.) In his wisdom, he added a headphone jack to the machine, which I used with a huge pair of over-the-ear headphones. I was absolutely mesmerized with the quality of the sound, and was able to hear things I could not hear through the speakers. And, of course, if I could hear the music clearly for the first time with headphones, I should be able to hear even more clearly at high volume. I remember playing Isaac Hayes’ “Theme from Shaft” over and over and over again, at a volume so high that I am surprised my ears did not bleed. This would have been around my senior year in high school or my freshman year in college. I still have that 45 RPM, though the grooves are severely worn. My hearing grew worse.

After finally finishing with school, I took a job in the paper industry. For the next 22 years I worked in high noise environments, and it is at this time that I became serious about protecting my hearing. The hearing test was an annual obligation, and the frightening decline in my hearing was there on paper to see, year after year. I used hearing protection at work, of course, but I even began using it at home, while mowing the lawn. The decline was inexorable.

After leaving the paper industry, I dispensed with the annual hearing test, because I assumed that my hearing loss should level off after I quit subjecting myself to high noise environments. I continued to use hearing protection around the house, and at the gun range. But something happened recently that tells me the hearing loss never took a vacation.

For the past nine months or so I have been suffering from tinnitus. At first it was simply annoying, but eventually it bothered me so much that I made an appointment to have my GP check it out. I was hoping for a simple cause: impacted ear wax. Unfortunately, my ear canals were clean as a whistle. So it came to pass that I made an appointment with the Ear, Nose, and Throat man.

He proceeded to inform me that tinnitus is a frontal lobe problem. According to the National Institutes of Health website, researchers “propose that the limbic system—a linked network of brain structures involved in emotion, behavior, and long-term memory—acts as a gatekeeper to keep the tinnitus signal from reaching the auditory cortex, the part of the brain that mediates our conscious perception of sounds. In people with tinnitus, they suggest, the gate has broken.”

After hearing that this is a frontal lobe problem, Kathy suggested a pre-frontal lobotomy. The doctor, fortunately, ignored her, and opted instead for an MRI of my brain. To Kathy's surprise, they found that I have one. The radiologist has by now reviewed the scan and I suspect my ENT has his report. I will hear the details in a couple of weeks.

By the way, if the technician offers you a copy of your brain scan, don’t take it. I popped the disc of MRI images into my computer, and immediately was beset with worry. Are those amyloid plaques? Does that blood vessel look right, or is it about to blow? Just don’t do it.

This week I had my first hearing test in 21 years. The results were absolutely shocking. A young human with good hearing should be able to hear up to 20,000 Hertz (Hz). That sensitivity to high frequencies does not last for too many years, as the nerves in the ear begin to die off. The higher frequencies are the first to go. Twenty-one years ago I could hear up to a frequency of about 11,000 Hz. This week I learned that my hearing cut-off was somewhere between 4,000 and 5,000 Hz.

Things could be worse. The highest note on the piano is just a tad bit over 4,000 Hz, and I can hear that, so for the most part I can still enjoy music. The human voice is pitched much lower, so I can hear most conversations, though I really do need you to add a few decibels when speaking. But the path forward, tinnitus or no tinnitus, is clear: my hearing is in what appears to be an unstoppable decline.

As Kathy pointed out, there is a bright side to all this. To paraphrase a quote from the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg: “A little hearing loss is good for a marriage.”