hearingblog

brian wilson was mostly deaf in one ear from an early age.

Me, it’s just from rock clubs. My “ear”, that is my hearing brain so to speak, is better than ever. But I have hearing loss. I’ll never be able to hear the world as I did as a child, again, and how I long to, with my grown up “ear”.

no, but there was the first time i tripped on acid…. that seriously changed the way i interacted with the world in a sensory fashion.

it’s an interesting topic though, one i’ve spent time thinking about. for example, how do we know that red is really red. your perception of red and my perception of red may be actually two very different colors. and we would never know – because we both call what we see red, thinking the other can agree that this is red. but all we really agree on is that there is a label for a particular hue – not what the definiton of that hue actually is.

so all communication is relative based on our own experience – and our experiences truly are our own experiences. there are very few shared experiences in life i think – even listening to the same piece of music, or looking at the same piece of art as someone else is not a shared experience.

man is an island.

I’ve never had a permanent experience, but I did have an interesting temporary one. The balconies on my building were being repaired – 8 jackhammers at a time, six days a week. I obviously had to spend some time there. I used earplugs and had some heavy duty headphones that are made to shut out sound. I still could hear some sound, but it was a lot better. However, I noticed that my sense of smell was noticeably better.

This morning I was afraid of being fired by my boss as the tensions at work are at an extreme high. I suddenly experienced a loss of vision. I’ve been having these and your email just made me realize that I may be sabotoging myself. I actually believe that you may regain your hearing. I think it might also be a “mental block”. We’re doing these amazing exercises at my new job where we discuss healing and illnesses as almost excuses for bad behavior. I have to constantly work on clearing my mind in order to stop having these lack of sight happenings. It all started years ago with a twitching eye, these days, I’m seeing black for a few whole entire seconds at a time. I was looking @ the bus I was about to miss and for a moment there, I thought I saw it. Then everything went away. My mind told my eyes to turn off. It was so weird.
I can’t even really explain it. It’s although someone pressed the delete button on my vision. I am a video artist and I completely depend on what I see to believe. I need to listen more to my intuition as my boss says. I know this is my only way to prevent this issue.
Use more than my five senses. I want to focus on my intuition.

I was surprised to learn that we cannot hear sounds that are outside our aural vocabulary. A Danish friend was trying to get me to pronounce a Danish word. He kept saying “It’s not ‘uuh’. It’s ‘uuh’.” But both vowels sounded the same to me.

More recently I was talking a a Japanese friend about the Japanese syllable “hu”. I said the Japanese pronounce it like it was in between “hu” and “fu”. He looked puzzled and then said they are the same. He did not mean they were equivalent. They actually sounded exactly the same to him.

It seems that sound is heavily processed by our brain before we get to “hear” it. Research has shown that our ability to perceive sound is largely shaped by our early childhood language training. So it may be too late for adults to learn to hear certain sounds.

Makes me wonder what the world would sound like if we knew how to hear everything.

About ten years ago I decided to take a jog at noon, on a rather hot (over 100) day. It was pretty intense and stressful. About an hour after my run I noticed that my hearing was getting worse in my left ear. I went straight to the urgent care, and they diagnosed me with sudden hearing loss. I had lost about 60 dB of hearing except for the lowest and highest frequencies, probably from swelling around the eighth nerve. I was told to rest, get near sea-level and take steroids; and immediately did all three.

It was pretty frightening to lose my hearing, especially given my occupation. I considered other careers, started to look at computer graphics, image processing, etc. And in the meantime developed software so I could compulsively test my hearing.

Eventually I found my mind started to adapt to my new hearing. Voices became more intelligible, and I even found I was spatially locating sounds again, using the acoustic quality of the sound to determine where it was coming from. I was getting used to the idea of going ahead with just my right ear…

Then after two weeks, I had a sudden recovery. The first sound I noticed was a tennis shoe squeak, it seemed like the high frequencies were coming back. Then later that day, I had the aural equivalent of a leg waking up after too much pressure on the nerve. Instead of the intense tingling, I had an intense roaring sound in my left ear. After about a minute of this, my hearing was back.

One problem left from that incident is a distortion around 1kHz… and I now habitually flip my headphones when working on music.

I’ve been legally blind in one eye since birth. I have peripheral vision, but no focal point – just a black spot which grows and gets red edges if I try to focus.

I got a concussion my junior year of college – smacked the back of my head on a corner of the desk.

My boyfriend drove me to the hospital and I had depth perception for the first time in my life. But there was a giant black spot in the middle of all the dimensionality.

Evidently my brain just compensates and doesn’t look out that eye. I don’t mind not having depth perception, but it was nice to visit that land for a bit.

JFS: At first, I thought my hearing was improving to the point that I was now hearing the rush of the blood cells through the capillaries in my tympanic membrane (eardrum). Alas, this was not the case. I had developed tinnitus, according to the doctor. It is not usually very loud, and I can usually ignore it, even in a quiet room when trying to go to sleep. But it is there, constantly except for the rare times when it has seemed to go away entirely. It is not easily masked by other sounds. It is high pitched whistle of indeterminate pitch, almost more of a hiss. It is almost as if everything was Dolbyized but I was unable to turn on the decode button. (The Dolby process raises or equalizes the treble on recording and reduces it on playback, taking the noise floor of tape hiss down along with it.)
The doctor described it, according to one hypothesis, as the “death cry of the cilia” (the tiny hairs lining the cochlea). At my age, almost 75, and I have had this condition now for ten years or so, there is also a reduction of the highest audible pitch, but that doesn’t seem to matter much.
There is still no cure. The best thing that I can do for it is to try to avoid loud noises, but I am not sure that even these make it worse, and they do not seem to have been the cause.

I’ve been functionally deaf since birth, due to being born 9 weeks premature. The hearing loss is “conductive”, which is supposed to be, (for lack of a better description,) the best type of hearing loss. However, what should be a fixable case of hearing loss is anything but: last time they went in for surgery, over ten years ago, they discovered there was a facial nerve lying across the area that needed to be corrected, so they immediately stopped the procedure.

I’m not bitter about the hearing loss. Why should I be? Since I’ve lived with it all my life, I haven’t really noticed it all that much, at least until recently, when I’ve gotten a hearing aid put in. With the aid, it is a delight to actually hear in full stereo–the first time I put it in, I drove him with the left window down, just listening to the sounds on the street. I also found out that the closed door alarm on the left side of my car was a microtone away from the alarm on the opposite side of the car.

My left ear is naturally deficient when it comes to higher frequencies, so bass notes are much easier for me to hear unaided. I believe that this is part of the reason why I have gravitated towards lower instruments, starting first with the trombone, and later the tuba.

I won’t say it is fun living all your life with a noticeable hearing deficiency–it isn’t. But it is something you get used to. The only thing I really don’t care for is the ability to not hear voices as clearly sometimes. It gets annoying having to say “What?” all the time.

The story of how my senses have changed through time is long and complicated. Actually, I never thought of my medical experiences from this perspective as the big changes in how I see, sound, feel and taste are only consequences of other conditions.
My sensorial adventure started seven years ago when something happened in my left eye. I was packing to move into a new apartment and all of a sudden I had the feeling that a curtain was falling to the floor after been blown by an invisible and silent wind. The weird thing was that wherever I directed my sight the fallen curtain would follow me. It was there, lying on the left corner of my visual area. The rest of the space was completely dark. Black. Void. I had just had a retinal detachment, something unknown to me at that time. While in the E.R. I remember looking around and seeing everything distorted through the waves of my “lying curtain”: people’s faces were deformed and wavy, and, depending on which angle I used to look at them, they would look giant or skinny, spiky or gluey. Most of them were also missing parts, disappeared in my wide “blind” area. I was rushed into surgery and my left eye was saved. It took me a long time, though, to adjust to the waves and the black spots that still characterize my vision in that eye, especially because I was working as a high school teacher back then and my eyes were expected to focus on white pages and small letters all day long. It was hard, but I have to say: I just don’t notice anymore…
Then a couple of years ago I was diagnosed with advanced tongue cancer. The major surgery that followed required a reconstruction, which means I completely lost any sensitivity in my mouth except for palate and cheeks. It took one year to start having foods by mouth again, but the experience is and will always be so very different than before: having no sensitivity in my mouth means that I have no idea where the food is, I have zero perception of it. The food gets into relationship with me through my sight, then through touch on my lips, and then, once it enters my mouth, it gets lost in the void, in the nothingness of the non-me: I am just not there where the food is! I can feel it again when it goes down my throat. The connection between lips and throat is psychological (and external, as I use a baby spoon to move the food under my teeth). Useless to say I have no sense of taste: what I taste is an imaginary mixture of smell and memory. If I focus really hard I think I remember how it felt to really eat something: taking a bite, tasting the differentiated flavors, aromas, temperatures, textures, moving the food naturally from side to side and then swallowing everything down..
I remember that right after surgery most of my senses had been isolated: I would breath through a tracheostomy (no smell), I would be fed via stomach tube (no taste), big part of my body would feel numb for a long time (no touch), I couldn’t keep my eyes open due to weakness (no sight). I could only hear well, but the noises of the medical machines around my bed were so loud and scary that somehow I felt isolated anyway from the rest of the world or the quietness of my imagination. Particularly annoying and frightening was the deafening sound of the sucking machine in my left ear: it was there to remind me that my tracheostomy could easily get clogged with a consequent risk of choking. I guess this is the reason for my recent intolerance to loud sounds. I love silence now, soft sounds, whispering music. Most of the time I turn off the cd player and prefer to listen to the natural sounds of the environment. Anything loud makes me feel uncomfortable, mildly overwhelmed.
My speech has been highly affected, too, of course (this part is more about a function than one of the five senses, but I’ll spend a few words about it anyway as it deals with sounds). First of all, my vocal cords were badly damaged by radiation therapy and I wouldn’t be able to make the slightest sound for months. Then some sort of sound came back and it was a single hoarse tone for another few months. I worked hard with a voice therapist for a while learning how to control breathing and be gentle on my healing vocal cords so to extend the range of notes in my voice. Almost two years after surgery my voice keeps improving: when nobody else is there I sing for my kids sometimes (luckily they don’t mind the quality of the sounds, they just love their mother’s voice) and every time I realize I can go some sort of half a note higher than last time..
After getting a little control of my voice again, I started to work on coordination: putting words together. If you freeze your tongue for a few seconds and try to speak just using your lips you’ll have a rough idea of my starting point. I remember my speech therapist saying “we’ll have to be CREATIVE to have you pronounce lip sounds that go as close as possible to the alphabet sounds”. It was and still is the hardest journey I’ve ever been through. I do my best to be intelligible and communicate, and somehow I think that what I’ve reached so far is a little miracle. Sometimes I talk and people understand me, sometimes I make a successful phone call by myself. I try not to count the times I fail, the times strangers stop talking when it comes to me and start sign language (which I don’t understand) because they assume I’m deaf, or the times they turn paralyzed when I start talking. Sounding so weird has consistently limited my social skills and made my artistic expression a necessity. When I speak I try to avoid all words containing –K- and –G- and -R- sounds (I haven’t found a way to substitute them yet): it’s an exhausting obstacle race towards the message! This means I use synonyms of what I have in mind, reduce the message to its very essence (any added detail is an unnecessary risk of losing intelligibility) and I talk only when it’s really necessary. The most incredible thing is that my inner perception of the way I sound is completely different than the actual pronunciation: so most of the work I did with the speech therapist was learning through her feedback where I was intelligible and where I was not: as a matter of fact, when I listen to myself talking I hear imperfections but no missing consonants. This is also why I have a problem with recognizing my voice when taped (“do I really speak so badly?”).
There was a time when I would teach English and Russian to Italian students and I would go to school talking for hours and hours and hours in three languages. Neil, you say that people’s senses seem to be limited just where they are needed more, especially for working reasons. I wonder if you and I would feel any better if blind or paralyzed and if this wouldn’t interfere with our work just the same way. My point is that any of the 5 senses we lose is a consistent part of us that is lost. It takes time to adjust to the loss. But then we are driven to experience life in new unsuspected ways. We may like them, we may not: I am just sure it depends on us, on our attitude and our courage.

The first time I, and my family, realized I had bad vision was when I lived in England. I was about to get my haircut and my mom told me my favorite action hero was featured in a book in the store window across the street and I had to guess who it was because I was unable see. To me, guessing was natural so I assume I must have had bad sight for a while before then.

Ever since then I have been plagued with bad eyesight and have been forced to wear either glasses or contact lenses. This has dictated how I display myself to the world. When living in England, I wore glasses. I moved to America and got contact lenses, which became part of my arduous morning appearance ritual. I used to spend hours getting ready between showering, dressing, applying hair gel, and putting my contacts in.

Eventually, I began to understand that appearances were not important to me and stopped caring about dressing up for everyone else. Then I began to wear glasses. Glasses are very different in that my eyesight is limited by the size of the lenses (I have to turn my neck to see things) and the images I see can be distorted greatly in the form of curving. Also, with regards to how I appear to the world, every year, when I get a check up at my optometrists (I also have another appointment to make yearly and another expense to check if my insurance covers), I can decided to change my frames and change my look.

First of all, I can’t ever remember waking up and being able to see instantly. I am always surrounded by blurry images. It is depressing. I have in the past used it to my advantage. On night-time car trips from my old home in Connecticut to my summer home in Martha’s Vineyard, I would listen to Radiohead (specifically, the album Kid A, my favorite album of all time) and take off my glasses to watch beautifully blurry orbs, that look like crystals, of light pass me by. This was before I had abused illegal drugs, which I do simply to experience a different existence and perhaps a slight high sensation. Even today, I catch myself wanting to take off my glasses on drives to observe the space-travel beauty accompanied by brilliant mood-setting music.

Second of all, recently I brought in my glasses for a lens change because of scratches on my current glasses. I had the lenses sent to me by my parents and had a different optometrist than I have at home fit them in my frames. They were unable to properly replace the lenses due to a lens size error, which distorted my vision greatly. I could play with the position of LCDs and LEDs simply by turning my head for whatever reason (refraction or something). It has led to some interesting ideas for visualizations in my thesis project.

Lastly, I have been forced to decide at times, during or prior to intercourse with a girl, whether I should be able to see everything or be completely uninhibited. Of course, I could put in contacts and avoid the situation altogether but that hasn’t been in the front of my mind during times of passion. I find I must either take off my glasses to avoid having to constantly adjust their position on my nose or to protect them from harm. Then, as I am a greatly visual lover, I am starved of that sense in efforts to express myself without regard for anything. This dilemma has brought to light my dissatisfaction with my terrible sight, of late.

As I am always evaluating my world and the pros and cons of everything I have been given genetically etc. I could go on much longer but that is what I think is important to note in my experience with having a sense impaired.

I am not sure how this fits for sure since my experience did not involve loss – but, it has created a completely new way of experiencing my subconscious world.Coolidge, Arizona March 26, 2009

I was on concert tour with my group, Quintet of the Americas, during the week of March 23rd, 2009. We flew to Phoenix on Monday, 3/23, and drove to Eastern Arizona where we played a concert at Eastern Arizona State University along with some children’s concerts, a familiar format that included music we have played for many years. Following a two day stay, we drove back to a motel just East of Phoenix where we would stay for two more concerts. On Thursday morning, 3/26, we drove to Coolidge, Arizona for 2 children’s concerts. As we drove the flat desert highway to Coolidge, just before we got into town, we noticed, off in the distance, a large canopied structure, very modern looking, that stood over what looked to us to be a big clump of dirt. There was a sign next to the entrance. It was Casa Grande Ruins National Monument. There was one other large structure visible to us as we approached Coolidge. It was a large, 6 or 7 story, monolithic, dark brown structure, looming like a tombstone on the flat desert landscape. As we drove into town, following our directions, we drove up to the structure. It was our concert hall, on a part of a run down high school campus, where we would give our morning children’s concert and where we would play our evening concert that night. Children were filing into the hall as we were greeted and led to the large, darkish stage. The hall was a bit run down – the children brought it to life. We presented two very fun concerts for the children. They had a great time and showed their appreciation following the concert by wanting to hug us. As we left the hall they crowded around us for group hugs. This was extraordinary – and we commented about it as we drove home. We passed the Casa Grande Ruins National Monument again as we left town.

We had been told by the concert association presenting us that Coolidge was an underserved community. So, when a small appreciative audience showed up for the concert that night, we were not too surprised. We would present the same concert we had done for many years with our typical enthusiasm for playing the music we love. At intermission, we went back to our “dressing room” – an all purpose room used for choral rehearsals. The room was shabby – with torn carpet, and in need of painting and other repairs. The concert was going just fine – Laura, Barb, Maureen Hurd (a sub), a Barry (a sub) and I were having a very good time. We each give some oral program notes to the audience about the music were about to play. It was my turn to introduce two pieces, Amazing Grace, an oboe solo with clarinet drone, and The Soul, by Louis Ballard, a Native American Chief. The piece features a Native American Flute – made by Ballard’s son. I played flute part. I introduced these two pieces, which dovetail one following the other, as a sampling of pieces that we had played at “The Reading of the Names” at Ground Zero in NYC. I talked about the power of music to heal and to sanctify. I played Amazing Grace and sat down to play the Lacota Flute for the “Soul” which is based on an Eskimo burial melody. As I played, after having switched to the oboe, a brightly lighted image suddenly flashed into my head – intrudingly. It was all white, with 2, black, almond shaped eyes. It was sloped and rounded – like our popular image of a ghost – and stood up to my right, stoically, as if its arms were crossed, staring at me. It flashed on and then, as if knowing it had registered with me, it went off. I was never afraid – I continued playing as it happened and finished the piece. I filed the experience away in my mind and we finished the concert.

On our drive back to our hotel – a trip that would take about 45 minutes – as we drove by Casa Grande Ruins (we still did not know what kind of site it was), and whether consciously or not, I decided to tell everyone what had happened. It sparked a lot of discussion of paranormal experiences. This HAD happened to me – they knew that the experience was real – to me. For me, the realization about what had happened was really starting to set in.

The next morning we were met in the lobby by a woman from the local concert association who would guide us to our morning children’s concert. I was the first person to meet her in the lobby – it was just the two of us. She asked me how it went in Coolidge. I said “just fine” (not wanting to go “there”). Then she told me that Coolidge is an “unusual place” that “people there believe in spirits”. OMG – then I told her my story – she was not comfortable – hearing me but moving on. Then the quintet showed up and we left for our morning concert. That night we played at a modern, very clean church – “no spirits in this place”, I thought and told the quintet.

We returned to NYC the next morning. I called my mom and Ken and told them both of my extraordinary experience. I decided to do some investigating. I found Casa Grande Ruins National Monument. It is the oldest national monument in the nation and is the site of a 14th century adobe structure that had been 4 stories high and because of protection, is amazingly in tact. Researchers think it used partially as an astrological observatory since its walls face the points of the compass and some of the window are aligned to sun and the moon at specific times. Casa Grande is also one of the lowest spots in North Americas – making it one of the hottest. Hohokam, an ancient Pueblo tribe, had left many artifacts.
I also googled “Coolidge, Arizona spirits” and found hundreds of spirit sightings in and around Coolidge and Casa Grande.

My life has changed. My perceptions have been dramatically altered – I now pay much more attention to my sub conscious – to that audio/video tape that plays constantly in the background of my mind. A whole new world is showing itself that has been there all along – I am sensitized to it now.

“If it’s too loud, you’re too old.”

I remember hearing (and possibly saying!) that old adage as a youngster, never realizing how sensitive I would become to its tone and (false) intent. In 2002 at the “ripe old age” of 34, I developed a highly sensitive right ear due to overexposure to sound. I attended two fabulous festivals of acousmatic music back-to back, and came home with a ringing and pain in my right ear. I went to an ear-nose-throat specialist. They did a hearing test. The doctor said… “your hearing is better than mine; you’ve probably just stressed your ear. It will go away after a while, but you need to stop listening.” “Stop listening?”, I said to myself… “How does one manage that? It’s not like you can turn your ears off…?”… So I asked “For how long, and what do I do?”… The doctor said “Do not listen to any music of any sort for at least three months — no radio, no TV, no movie theaters. Do not expose yourself to any “unnecessary” sound.” — “Hmmmm”, I thought… “What makes certain sounds “unnecessary”, and others “necessary…?”

Nonetheless, I followed the doctor’s advice but with difficulty since I was teaching a music technology class that required me to listen to LOTS of electroacoustic music — all the time!… I also consulted with Paul Koonce, who told me of a similar experience had had with hyper-sensitivity. His condition remedied itself after many years. (I believe he had a strict regimen that he followed for his ears and was also very protective of them in concerts, etc.) He also encouraged me that my condition would improve.

It’s now 2009 and my right ear is still quite sensitive to loudness in certain frequencies. I have custom made earplugs that I keep in a little bag. When I go to concerts, I hang the bag around my neck so the earplugs are always at the ready. I also plug my ears (the right one especially) if a sound becomes painful. In that regard, I have no shame. I’ve become very selfish about my hearing — I don’t want anyone else’s sounds to rob me of my ability to hear. So I don’t really care who sees me plugging my ear or inserting my earplugs.

Maybe I AM too old — but honestly, sometimes it IS just TOO LOUD….

Back in early ‘06, I had blocked ears that I attributed to the lingering effects of a bad cold. Then, some slight ringing appeared that could be heard only when all was quiet at bedtime. After getting up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, I got one of those frightening, desperate feelings that I associated with what it could be like just at the time of a stroke. Turning around in the bathroom, I collapsed on the floor. I actually got up from the floor rather quickly and proceeded to chew an aspirin, then was driven to the emergency room. After nearly 18 hours which included many tests and scans, the doctors could not find anything wrong.

After I was sent home, for the following days I would have these sudden, bizarre episodes of unexplained paranoia and anxiety. While sitting at the computer one afternoon, this giant sucking sound happened inside my head and I could feel the ringing sound slowly move from one ear to the other. Things were getting worse – physically and emotionally – and so I thought of an old friend of mine who had become a doctor many years before. After a call, she recommended an ENT (Ear, Nose & Throat) man whom she described as “old school” – meaning that he was an older gentleman who actually took the time to listen to his patients. This doctor recognized the problem instantly – “viral labyrinthitis” – and placed me on medication that had to be strictly followed.

As the months passed, I wanted to figure out a way to check my progress. Instead of using test tones of varying frequencies which would be quite unnatural, I created an 80 minute piece of music that resembled Brian Eno’s work “Thursday Afternoon” and added a long fade-in – approximately half an hour. Using identical settings each time and with the same headphones in the same location, etc., I would test myself a couple times a week to listen for the first time I could hear sound in the fade-in. So, at first, it could be 20 minutes in…then some weeks later it’d be 15 minutes in, and so on…

Checking online, I discovered how lucky I was that I didn’t wait longer for a diagnosis, because viral labyrinthitis can cause complete hearing loss if not checked right away. The frustrating part was dealing with younger physicians who had assumed that because I was in my 50’s that I had suffered a stroke or heart attack and didn’t have the knowledge or interest in coming up with a correct diagnosis.

Three years later, again after a bad cold, I thought that I was in the early stages of the same virus – blocking of ears, a bit of a ringing…- but after going immediately back to the same “old-school” doctor, he assured me that it wasn’t the same thing as before, but a 5 or 6 day treatment with a steroidal medication was suggested. Hearing tests suggested that my hearing was quite normal for someone my age, but that I may at times experience “hyperacoustic” tendencies – meaning that certain frequencies or frequency clusters may be particularly acute at times. I’d noticed this particularly with the sound of two dishes coming together – say, when emptying a dishwasher – that had a jarring sound quality even tho one could consider this sound a complex cluster of frequencies (noise).

In retrospect, after the anxiety – brought on by chemical changes both voluntary and involuntary – subsided, I found that I could begin thinking about how I could use this experience creatively. There were days when I could’ve investigated which aspect was more bothersome during these times: the loss of frequencies or the loss of spatial orientation, but I found that I would be wasting too much time not actually creating music. Better to find these things out during the creative process and use them as a springboard for something else all together. Some people would probably quickly try to wipe any memory trace of sporadic or encroaching hearing loss. I remember sharing my story with Karlheinz Stockhausen who had joked that, based on the frequencies that I still heard at that time, that my hearing was still exceptional compared to the loss that will occur when I reached his age. The next day, I was repeating the story to a colleague while Stockhausen sat nearby. He suddenly asked us to stop speaking on this subject…or if we wanted to continue to please do it somewhere else. An oddly funny, but somewhat understandable position taken by someone who was so totally devoted to the art of composition.

Maybe I would think of this idea of creative use differently if I had actually lost all hearing in one ear – certainly in both ears?
There can be an initial anxiety when faced with hearing loss, but it’s what you do with the situation afterward that keeps one moving forward.

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Last fall I fell, into an orchestra pit. I nearly died, my brain was bleeding. Additionally, I had broken my left cheek, left shoulder, and left femur. They gave me very heavy sedatives, opiates, or whatever. Dilaudid. Once they determined my brain was no longer hemorrhaging, I had a few surgeries but I really couldn’t feel my leg at all, the nerves were damaged, and my entire body was very numb from all of the drugs, which flowed into my blood through an IV (I would just press the button to get more). It was terrifying to want to move my leg and not be able to, I couldn’t even make my toes wiggle. I worried that I wouldn’t be able to ever move it again, that I would be somehow bound to a wheel chair, which I had to use for several months, which is also why I had to live at a nursing home after leaving the hospital (but that’s another story). Luckily, it wasn’t long before the nerves started to repair themselves, I was fortunate to have been flown in a helicopter to a very good hospital that specialized in trauma cases. The drugs kept coming for a while, eventually even the drugs wouldn’t stop the pain but the pain was worth it to know that I actually still have nerves (though that is a sort of hindsight I didn’t have at the time, at the time it was just pain). I was very lucky, even though it seems strange to me to think of this experience in any kind of positive terms or to use the work “luck” in relation to any of it. I have had my senses temporarily impaired before, but always knew somehow that they would come back. This was the one time I wasn’t sure of that.