Do you hear what I hear?

Or maybe a better question is, do I hear what you hear?

Photo by Karsten Winegeart on Unsplash

The first time I heard the sound I was sitting in bed at night, reading a book. It was difficult to make out at first; a very light whirring or buzzing, almost electronic. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was hearing, or if I was even hearing anything at all.

“Do you hear that?” I said to my new wife at the time, who was laying next to me. “That little, high-pitched sound that doesn’t stop?”

She shook her head to say no, but she she sat up to listen, as if to humor me. A few moments passed and she could hear nothing but the silence in the room, so she laid back down. But, she said, she had an idea what it might be.

“It might be tinnitus,” she said. “Especially at the volume you listen to music in your car.”

Gulp. I did listen to music a little loud in my car, I knew… but, who didn’t? You had to, right, to enjoy the full experience of the sound? Nothing ever happened to anyone I knew who’d listened to their music loud too, so… what was the worst that could happen?

No one I had known up to that point had experienced tinnitus or any other kind of hearing loss. It was an old person’s problem, I told myself. Though of course, I’d seen stories about it on magazine covers and on the news, about the epidemic of hearing loss that has hit younger people in recent decades. But I ignored them all.

The only person I knew of to have it was Pete Townsend of the rock band The Who, and I remembered how it hit me when I heard the news that he heard sounds he could never get away from: that it sounded excruciating — and, that I was glad it wasn’t happening to me.

For a while, I hoped it would go away. But it didn’t. When I woke up in the morning, it was there. When I went to the bathroom to take a shower, it was there. When I made breakfast, it was there. When I drove to work, it was there. At work, all day, it was there — like a creature, sitting on my shoulder, humming a high tune I could never turn off.

It didn’t take long before I found myself becoming preoccupied with the sound. I couldn’t get rid of it, even though I desperately wanted to. Sleep helped, because I was unconscious. But the moment I woke the next day, my little visitor was back again, chirping and buzzing away.

As luck would have it, my wife then was an audiologist — she did hearing tests and fitted people with hearing aids for a living. (Ironic, right?) She asked me to come in to take a hearing test the next day; I of course agreed, thinking that maybe, somehow, she could find a way to help me squelch my tinnitus for good.

I’ll never forget sitting in the padded hearing booth, headphones on, listening to sounds that got softer and softer as the moments ticked by. If you’ve ever had a hearing test, you know what I’m talking about — at first, you hear most everything loud and clear. But by the end, you’re really straining to hear what the audiologist is saying outside the glass booth you’re in.

When I came out, the look on her face wasn’t good. It was sad, in fact; whatever my diagnosis was, it had upset her.

“You have the beginnings of hearing loss,” she said, adding that my tinnitus was probably here to stay. I looked at her and because I didn’t know what she knew about hearing loss, I didn’t completely clue in to what she was saying.

“Well, it’s not all that bad, is it?”

“Not yet,” she replied. “But from here, it tends to go in one direction.”

Another gulp. How could this happen? I was still relatively young, at about age 36. I was still indestructible, wasn’t I? C’mon, maybe this isn’t so bad… I can deal with this, right?

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If you had to choose to lose one of your senses, which would it be? Sight or hearing? “My hearing, of course,” I said. “That’s what everyone thinks — until they do.”

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What I needed to think about was hearing aids, she told me — which, of course, I resisted. No way was I, a young guy in his 30s (right?!), going to wear hearing aids so people could see them. I didn’t want the stares, the jokes, the jabs from my friends. And if I’m honest, maybe most of all I didn’t want to let go of my own vanity.

“No, I don’t think I’m ready for that yet,” I told her. “That’s for down the line,” I added. Way down the line.

“You need to think about it,” she insisted, reminding me of something she’d told me at least a dozen times before — that many, many people (maybe most) who experience hearing loss resist getting help for way too long.

The moment you start to have hearing problems is the time to intervene, when whatever damage has happened inside your ear is still new, and the cells inside are still receptive to therapy. Over time, if they don’t receive enough stimulation, they start to shut down and stop sending signals to your brain – which makes up for the lost signal by creating its own sound, which is what people with tinnitus (like me) hear.

Often, she asked me: if you had to choose to lose one of your senses, which would it be? Sight or hearing? “My hearing, of course,” I said, to which she replied, “that’s what everyone thinks — until they do.” When you lose the ability to hear, you lose your connection from the people around you; from the world, really.

At this point, you might be thinking that I listened, that I saw the light. That I got the hearing aids, to stop the damage that was happening to my hearing.

Well….

Fast-forward about fifteen years or so, and here we are. I still have tinnitus, of course; as I’d later learn in researching it to find out what might happen in my case, tinnitus isn’t always permanent. For many people who experience it, it’s only temporary. The fact that I’ve had it for fifteen years now, however, means that mine is.

Now, I’m noticing that I’m having more and more trouble hearing people — especially people with softer voices like my wife’s. Especially consonant sounds, like s’s and f’s. I have to get closer to them, lean in, ask them to repeat what they’ve said. The past several months, I’ve observed it more and more often in myself, to the point where I scheduled a hearing test recently.

When I went in, it was exactly like the last time, fifteen years ago. I was seated in the padded booth, which absorbs virtually all sound. The door is closed tightly, to prevent even the slightest sound from the outside coming in. I put on the headphones, and the audiologist started going through the test.

Ping! I heard, loud and clear. Then a softer ping, and then another and another. The last sounds were imperceptible, though I knew they were there because I could see the audiologist gesturing at her computer to trigger them. When I got my report afterwards, there was no mistaking it.

When I’d taken the test the first time, fifteen years ago, I had the beginnings of mild hearing loss. Not bad, but it was starting.

This time, the reading on the chart said “mild to moderately severe.” That’s the kind of result that inside, you feel that little sense of awareness rise up from your stomach all the way through your chest, into your throat. When you think to yourself, uh oh. (Which is not a good feeling in a doctor’s office!)

And, it shouldn’t have been a surprise. As I’ve been watching The Diplomat on Netflix lately, I have to use the closed captions to catch what the actors are saying. (I can’t be the only one, right? The way they shoot scenes now, with more natural-sounding dialogue, it sounds like they’re mumbling half the time… or is that just me?)

I notice myself leaning close to my wife, and asking people to repeat themselves regularly. And, I notice also, I’m the only one in the room who has to ask for that bit of extra help.

So today, I made the call to the audiologist and I set up an appointment. We’re doing this. And apparently, I learned from this recent New York Times article that I’ll be in good company:

“These new hearing aids are sexy,” said Pete Bilzerian, a 25-year-old in Richmond, Va., who has worn the devices since he was 7. He describes his early models as distinctly unsexy: “big, funky, tan-colored hearing aids with the molding that goes all around the ear.” But increasingly, those have given way to sleeker, smaller models with more technological capabilities.

Nowadays, he said, no one seems to notice the electronics in his ear. “If it ever does come up as a topic, I just brush it off and say, ‘Hey, I got these very expensive AirPods.’”

What I’d love to know is, how is your hearing? Have you ever experienced problems hearing, at least to the degree that you felt it warranted medical help? I’d love to hear your story, and help break down the stigma for us all.

As always, I hope you’ve had a great week and had the chance to get some great runs in out there — keep in touch and let me know how your life/running is going.

Your friend,

— Terrell