Say what?

A mind full of scorpions? A delve into the hearing-test induced auditory madness that is my imagination.

By Katie Sloane

I had a rogue hearing test recently. As part of our health benefits through work, we are entitled to a free health check — pap smear, mammogram, heart, lungs, kidneys etc; cursory eye test (you need glasses — yeah, I know) and hearing test. Despite my best efforts to tell them I was deaf in one ear, always have been, I was smiled and nodded at and given weird results. According to them, both ears were at half capacity — odd. Thinking the result of my deaf ear an anomaly, I was, understandably, a little worried about my one good ear, so booked for a follow up assessment at the hospital I’d been to years before when I’d had my hopes up that something might be done to restore hearing into my ‘dud’ ear.

Back then — maybe 15 years ago? — a colleague, much older than me and suffering conductive hearing loss due to age and degenerative causes, had successfully undergone surgery that involved taking some of the small bones in the ear to construct a sort of bridge of bone to connect the dots as it were, as bone is an excellent conductor of sound. The hearing he’d lost was restored and he, knowing of my condition, encouraged me to go and visit the same doctor in case something could be done. After all, it had been decades since I’d last seen anyone about my hearing - all I remember being told as a child is that it was just a ‘dead’ ear – who knew what they could do now?

To differentiate between conductive and sensorial hearing loss (the former can be restored; the latter can’t) a vibrating tuning fork is held to the skull, near to the affected ear; if you can hear it, not just feel it, there is hope. I excitedly googled possibilities of restoration after long term hearing loss and was buoyed up with the possibility of being able to hear stereo for the first time: imagine not having to switch between ear phones to hear the other half of 60s’ tracks! Imagine knowing what it’s like to know where in space sounds come from! To go out to dinner and not be the Awkward One who needs to sit on a certain side (everyone shuffle up!), nor too near a speaker, nor with the ‘good’ ear facing a loud table or a fan. To not feel the cold grip of anxiety squeeze your stomach during large work meetings filled with too many people talking at once, underscored with mood-brightening music that blurs the too-many sounds into a cacophony of mounting agitation…

But the closer the appointment came, I also started to get scared. Some of the testimonies I’d read online spoke of people who’d had their hearing restored becoming frightened by the sudden shift in their sensory perception – the sounds newly heard on the previously silent side of their body now felt too loud and scary, as if someone was forever jump-scaring them and shouting ‘Boo!’ Some struggled to make sense of the overwhelming chaos of noise that bombarded them from all directions, feeling crowded and claustrophobic in a new stereophonic world – and crucially, unable to simply turn away, or roll over to make it go away. It seemed restoring long term hearing loss might be like opening up a door wide open to your inner sanctum; one you can never close again. An open door that lets in garbled noise, gibbering conversations and terrible music. (Would those large work meetings only feel worse?!?)

It’s how I imagine suddenly being able to see a wider colour spectrum might feel – sure, it sounds pretty cool: who wouldn’t want to see ultra-violet and infrared light ALL THE TIME? But then the reality is probably terrifying – all those neon scorpions everywhere, not ever being able to switch visual channels and return to the safety of our ‘normal’ parameters of sight.

Some scorpions in rural Thailand unseen by the naked eye, lit up like neon disco balls under ultra violet light.

So when the test finally came, she did the tuning fork thing, and yes, I could hear it when she put it near my deaf ear… I was momentarily hopeful, despite the fear. But it turns out, my skull is just really good at conducting sound: it was, after all, only my right ear picking it up; there was absolutely nothing going on in my left. She concluded sensorial hearing loss – I have no auditory nerve – I was, I am, still profoundly deaf in my left ear. Nothing could be done; nothing can be done. I should feel lucky to be able to hear at all (Alright….) as it can only have been caused by some in-uterine or childhood virus. My left ear is essentially an ornamental piece of flesh useful only for decorating with lavish displays of earrings, preventing spectacles from falling off my face and duping strangers into thinking I am fully hearing and therefore making them think I’m horribly rude when I unknowingly ignore them.

So when the recent results came back, I needed to investigate.

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Back in the padded room, oversized head phones on head, I sit with the clicker awaiting clarification. The audiogram technician (let’s call him ‘tech guy’) is up to speed with the situation, tests my right ear and then goes to work on my left. What comes is a weird dreamscape of disturbing imagery constructed completely by sound. And perhaps my overactive imagination.

To block out the hearing in my right ear, the tech guy floods it with a series of shushing sounds — some are pleasant enough, resembling the North Sea retreating over a pebbled beach, or tropical rain streaming down on a steamy afternoon during the monsoon season. But others feel coldly desolate. Sitting there with my eyes closed to optimise the chances of being able to discern the beeps in my left when they come — like trying and failing to grasp something too slippery and small — I feel like I’m lost in thick fog on a lonely road in some godforsaken place at the end of the earth; it makes me feel empty, alone and utterly hopeless.

When he turns the volume up, the fog becomes thicker and somehow windy as well, blowing me around in a blind tempest of noise — a monochrome storm of loneliness and chaos (like the opening of The Wizard of Oz); other blocky sounds — like distant cables clanging underwater or the dull thud of large chunks of concrete colliding with the muffler peddle on. They make me feel like I’m at the bottom of the sea, cold and forgotten, slowly rotting away at the end of time.

I feel the beeps of sound that are being played into my ‘dead’ left ear long before I can hear them (my skull, playing conductor again), until tech guy ramps up the wall of auditory static in my right ear to completely obliterate the effects of my helpful cranium, until the pressure from the unheard pulses of sound that pound into my redundant eardrum are almost too much to bear. It’s nauseating. Like someone’s punching you from inside your head. Or you feel like you’re about to suffer the same fate as poor Oberyn Martell. (Oh, Pedro.)

The next test (possibly to assess the said conductivity of my skull — I have no idea) involves my head being latticed by two devices: one, a metal head band with flat-ended diodes that are placed asymmetrically on my head, one under my left, ‘dead’ ear, the other above my hearing right ear; a second set of normal headphones are placed at a slant from these, crisscrossing over my head to have one ear cushion sitting normally on right ear and the other clinging comically above my left, to the side of my forehead. It’s a good look.

Again, tech guy fills my right ear with fuzzy sounds to block it out. This time, the beeps are directed through the metal headband, not the headphones, and when they sound loudly, although I can hear them (again, well done, head, for conducting them around to the hearing part), as it’s no longer in my ear canal, I don’t feel the pressure; instead, and rather disconcertingly, I feel it move, as the flat-ended diode taps me on the head – gently at first then more insistently: knuckles rap — Hello! Hello?!? Is anybody home? I feel like McFly being pummelled by Biff in Back to the Future. As if I didn’t look ridiculous enough, I now have to suffer the cowing indignity of what feels like a bored and angry child tapping my head continuously with a grubby finger to see how much I can stand. It’s an odd sensation and I press the clicker almost reflexively when it taps me again as a reaction to being touched (bullied), not because I can hear it. I have that quote from The Simpsons replaying in my head: Stop, stoooop - he’s already dead!

Biff ‘the diode’ bully pummelling McFly

Test over, relieved of my stylish, double-phonic headwear, I sit in the busy waiting room and await seeing the doctor with the results, typing my weird experience on the notes app on my phone.

When I’m called in, she shows me normal results — well, normal for me: profoundly deaf in my left ear, strong hearing in my right — a very slight dip to when I saw her colleague over a decade ago, but that’s to be expected. She is baffled by the anomalous results from my health check; I’m just glad things are as they should be.

But side by side they do make a pretty puzzling picture. One for HR to grapple with, not me.