music and hearing III
To go back and chart out what went wrong I'll say this: One of the biggest problems was the ease of finding an ENT. When I knew I needed one, I was in a small mountain town in New Mexico. 120 miles to the west, Las Cruces had two or three of them with four-month waits; 120 miles to the east, Roswell had one with a three-month wait. I chose Roswell. My drives across the vast plains around Roswell gave me plenty of time to think. Mostly what I thought was, this would be a perfect place to land a UFO. But it would be a lousy place for a car to break down. There weren't many people out there. I think they needed hundreds of square miles just to raise one cow.
In any case when I found one he was good, reasonable and sensible. First thing he told me was, your hearing's not coming back. You damaged your ears by letting the inner ear be full of fluid for a while, and you can't undo that damage. Maniere's Disease is actually a condition of damage of the inner ear, which can be caused by several things, but basically your inner ear is a very complex organ whose entire job is to separate the sodium from the potassium in a flow of liquid passing through. Obviously it is malfunctioning in some way, but most likely because of the overload of sodium. We prescribe a diuretic (medicine that makes it hard for you to retain water) and a strictly-curtailed-sodium diet which we started to discuss. Basically no more chips, no more salt of any kind, no more fast food, no more highly processed food, cut way back on all that kind of stuff. What do you eat then? Everything else I guess.
When I went home I realized that a med I was taking actually had sodium in the name. I was taking it because I had started using the CPAP and I needed it to keep my nasal passages clear so I could use the CPAP successfully. In other words I was overloading my system with sodium for unrelated reasons, but the dizzy spells were getting worse and worse and I was beginning to realize that if my inner ear was full of fluid, not only the CPAP, but also my wife's sound machine, and the kids at the junior high down the hill, all those things were damaging my ear as I could tell they were, because it hurt. I knew at that point, that I was living with my inner ear full of fluid much of the time. I felt that damage when I woke up and I knew that my ears weren't popping as they should as I arrived down the hill to work at that junior high. You'll remember that I like to say the problem was, I was living at 9000 feet, but working at a junior high at 3000 feet, and my ears weren't popping. This was true. But why were they full of fluid in the first place? Either real bad diet, or med that dumps sodium in the system, those are the two choices. And I really didn't have such a bad diet.
I stopped that med right away but I noticed one other thing: Often when I tried a new med, the same thing would happen. My wife wanted me to treat ADHD as it was driving her crazy that I'd leave the house to get four things, sometimes 40 miles away, and come back with three or the wrong ones or something. It was just too hard for her to live with my ADHD and she wanted me to treat it. The speed-based drugs made my teeth chatter and I couldn't stand them. But the other ones seemed to set off my dizziness and that was intolerable too.
I have come to conclude that sodium is often used by the pharmaceutical companies because it's like a basic ingredient of all kinds of chemical reactions, and they assume that they can dump a little of it in our systems when these reactions are over. So they separate it from its chlorine, or whatever, combine it with this and that, all this stuff happens and you end up with a little sodium, so what's the harm? For most people, none, probably. For us, lots. Dizziness is no picnic. I'd have been better off just making more careful lists.
The reason I'm not angry is that I look back and say, well, I was trying to sleep with my wife. I was trying to please her. I was trying to run down the hill for four things and come back with the same four I went to get. I was trying to use a CPAP which I knew was good for my sleep and my snoring, and not disrupt the peace around the house. Was it worth losing my hearing? I really miss that hearing, especially the part that allowed me to listen to music. And tell whether it was in tune or not.
When I got to Illinois the ENT waits were a little different, but it was more like two months in Peoria, and one month in Iowa, a hundred and ten miles the other direction. That's a new chapter. The music is all in my memory though. I no longer even try to listen to a song.
In any case when I found one he was good, reasonable and sensible. First thing he told me was, your hearing's not coming back. You damaged your ears by letting the inner ear be full of fluid for a while, and you can't undo that damage. Maniere's Disease is actually a condition of damage of the inner ear, which can be caused by several things, but basically your inner ear is a very complex organ whose entire job is to separate the sodium from the potassium in a flow of liquid passing through. Obviously it is malfunctioning in some way, but most likely because of the overload of sodium. We prescribe a diuretic (medicine that makes it hard for you to retain water) and a strictly-curtailed-sodium diet which we started to discuss. Basically no more chips, no more salt of any kind, no more fast food, no more highly processed food, cut way back on all that kind of stuff. What do you eat then? Everything else I guess.
When I went home I realized that a med I was taking actually had sodium in the name. I was taking it because I had started using the CPAP and I needed it to keep my nasal passages clear so I could use the CPAP successfully. In other words I was overloading my system with sodium for unrelated reasons, but the dizzy spells were getting worse and worse and I was beginning to realize that if my inner ear was full of fluid, not only the CPAP, but also my wife's sound machine, and the kids at the junior high down the hill, all those things were damaging my ear as I could tell they were, because it hurt. I knew at that point, that I was living with my inner ear full of fluid much of the time. I felt that damage when I woke up and I knew that my ears weren't popping as they should as I arrived down the hill to work at that junior high. You'll remember that I like to say the problem was, I was living at 9000 feet, but working at a junior high at 3000 feet, and my ears weren't popping. This was true. But why were they full of fluid in the first place? Either real bad diet, or med that dumps sodium in the system, those are the two choices. And I really didn't have such a bad diet.
I stopped that med right away but I noticed one other thing: Often when I tried a new med, the same thing would happen. My wife wanted me to treat ADHD as it was driving her crazy that I'd leave the house to get four things, sometimes 40 miles away, and come back with three or the wrong ones or something. It was just too hard for her to live with my ADHD and she wanted me to treat it. The speed-based drugs made my teeth chatter and I couldn't stand them. But the other ones seemed to set off my dizziness and that was intolerable too.
I have come to conclude that sodium is often used by the pharmaceutical companies because it's like a basic ingredient of all kinds of chemical reactions, and they assume that they can dump a little of it in our systems when these reactions are over. So they separate it from its chlorine, or whatever, combine it with this and that, all this stuff happens and you end up with a little sodium, so what's the harm? For most people, none, probably. For us, lots. Dizziness is no picnic. I'd have been better off just making more careful lists.
The reason I'm not angry is that I look back and say, well, I was trying to sleep with my wife. I was trying to please her. I was trying to run down the hill for four things and come back with the same four I went to get. I was trying to use a CPAP which I knew was good for my sleep and my snoring, and not disrupt the peace around the house. Was it worth losing my hearing? I really miss that hearing, especially the part that allowed me to listen to music. And tell whether it was in tune or not.
When I got to Illinois the ENT waits were a little different, but it was more like two months in Peoria, and one month in Iowa, a hundred and ten miles the other direction. That's a new chapter. The music is all in my memory though. I no longer even try to listen to a song.
posted by tom at 12:39 PM
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