Our channels of communication have silted up with debris

My ears went pop and suddenly I could no longer hear, particularly from my left ear. Annoying, irritating but it has happened to most of us at some point. The usual remedy is to put your finger in your ear and give it a good shake. Or put one finger over the front of the ear and press hard to open that blocked inner channel. Pinching your nose while closing your mouth and giving a quick blow through your nose usually works. But for me despite all efforts, this strange deafness continued. 

My ear was obviously full of wax I surmised. And advice online from the Mayo Clinic warned against cotton buds in the ear. Who knew you could pierce the eardrum so easily with such soft things? On the fourth day, I consulted a pharmacist and was given drops for my ear to be inserted every four hours. I did that for two days with no positive outcome. Given the growing deafness in my left ear, I found myself adopting coping strategies. I walked on the left side of friends so that they are on my good side and I can hear them. I began to shout when I talked as if a raised volume in my own speech would help during conversations. 

I found myself strangely perplexed as to where the source of background sounds was coming from. Who knew that it was the stereo signal of two ears that helps you pinpoint where exactly that rumble originates? Without it, I look around bewildered awaiting visual signals to give me clues. Then, there is the noise in the deaf ear. That, I never expected. Instead of silence, at night in bed, the ear had a high-pitched hum with odd crackles randomly thrown in. As if my brain and ear have decided to stop normal communication channels and act like angry adolescents.  With either sullen silences or mumbling incoherence. Conveying no sense but a constant wall of annoyance and sudden unexpected hums of a range of frequencies.  

Finally, in despair, it had been a week, I queued to see a doctor. I sat in a waiting room with no official appointment but was shown in by the receptionist as the waiting room was completely empty. I sat 30 minutes in an empty waiting room hoping the doctor would finish with his client in his consulting room and fit me in as the receptionist had hoped.  After 40 minutes he was still with that same client and there was a surge of new patients into the waiting room. I realised with my heart sinking that my window of opportunity had closed. All these new people had pre-booked appointments while I had none. All of them, despite my 40-minute wait, were ahead of me. I left as deaf as I arrived and no further forward. I would have to endure the situation a little longer. Sleep was much, much harder with this noisy deaf ear. 

In these pandemic days seeing doctors in the UK is like finding the golden fleece. It requires extraordinary endeavours and persistence. Dear help those with serious conditions like cancer who have been left in limbo for too long. Lessons certainly need to be learned about how healthcare must be maintained and nurtured in good times so that in dire times it hits the ground running. Not underfunded and disembowelled from either incompetence from within or targets/changes from above. Too often, nowadays, it seems those put into positions are not there because of abilities but simply because of a lack of choice or who they happen to know. If the pilot of your plane got that position because he was someone’s cousin not because he was the best pilot you’d be outraged. You want the surgeon who operates on you or your loved ones to be of the best quality and a safe pair of hands with experience. Not someone promoted due to lack of other surgeons applying. Even before the pandemic two relatives of mine left their jobs as GPs because they were permitted to only spend on average ten minutes in appointments with each patient (one of the shortest times in the EU). We have to be so careful that we do not lose our best due to bad practice.

A recent study by the British Medical Association (published in May of this year) indicated that thousands of exhausted doctors in the UK are considering leaving the NHS in the coming year, citing excessive levels of stress and burnout due to the demands of the pandemic. The number of mature experienced doctors who are deciding to take early retirement has doubled in the last 12 months.  Professor Martin Marshall, Chair of the Royal College of GPs has indicated the chronic shortage of GPs in the NHS. Worryingly despite this present shortfall family doctors in England are quitting at a rate of three a day.  

As I live in Malta there is a different setup available here.  Each pharmacy usually has an in-house doctor available to see for a reasonable payment.  You do have to book in advance during these Covid days, whereas before you were able to just walk in and see a doctor.  Needless to say, after my experience of waiting in the surgery I made an appointment with the doctor.  He saw me the next day and prescribed ear drops and told me I would have to use them for three days and then come back.  Having already used drops to no avail I was unimpressed. And after three days, during which I became even more deaf I was back in his surgery.  This time the doctor took out a huge syringe that you would use on the rear end of a horse and blasted my ear with warm water while I held a metal kidney-shaped dish beneath my ear.  After three hard blasts, my ear popped open while the most disgusting stuff imaginable poured out into the dish.  The doctor showed me triumphantly the debris he had removed and it was impressive.  No wonder I had been unable to hear!  

I cannot begin to tell you of the relief I felt.  I could hear!  The world opened up to me again and a dreadful oppression of the spirit lifted.  How I sympathise with the hard of hearing now.  Every interaction becomes a source of concern, can one guess what the person is saying?  And even more worrying after three days you just pretend to listen, as if a person is speaking a foreign language you don’t know.  Gradually you withdraw from conversations and sit silent but uncomprehending adrift in a world of the deaf. It feels so good to be hearing again.  Why is it we only appreciate things when we lose them?  I like this quote on hearing loss as it strikes a chord.

“I hadn't really noticed that I had a hearing problem. I just thought most people had given up on speaking clearly.”

Hal Linden

There is I am sure a spiritual metaphor for this experience.  Sometimes we cannot hear the truth because our channels of communication have silted up with debris.  We can accept this new reality and just lower our expectations or we can take action and seek to cleanse the senses of all that has impeded them giving wings to our spirits and hope!

“First in a human being's way of life must be purity, then freshness, cleanliness, and independence of spirit.”

‘Abdu’l-Bahá, 

blah, blah, blah.....

I was complaining bitterly about my chronic sleeplessness on my 60^th birthday this year. I talked of my worries to my older brothers over the Christmas table groaning with goodies. They both confessed to having poor sleep themselves and blamed it on being over 60. “It’s just one of those things”, one said, “that comes with age like a dodgy ankle, bigger stomach, poor eyesight, a stiff back or arthritic thumbs”.  I was shocked. A lifetime of being a sound sleeper was no preparation for these long dark nights of ceiling inspection. It was my brothers’ knowing resignation that frightened me most. I thought insomnia was either in your genes or not.

My father had suffered his entire life from insomnia so I had naïvely thought that either you were born a poor sleeper or are one of the lucky ones like me. To find after six decades you could turn vampire like into a non-sleeper was a total betrayal of who I thought I was.

So, I have complained long and hard through this new way of living to all who have the patience to listen. Some proffer herbal drinks or bedtime routines as possible cures. Late night walks, banishing the laptop or avoiding taxing conversations all have been suggested and eagerly embraced by this pathetic night fugitive.

It was the next day weariness that wore me down. I felt as if I was operating on a half a tank and found simple tasks required stupendous effort. Typical sleep deprived mistakes included writing an entire set of appointments and meetings on the wrong week of my diary. That was followed by a confusing number of missed calls from furious people and knocking on my door by students while I was out doing anything other than what I was supposed to be doing.  “Sorry, sorry” became my new mantra that week.

That was also the week I started talking to myself on public transport. People began to give me odd looks as I gave myself a good stern dressing down for missing another important meeting. It’s fortunate that nowadays, I can pretend I have a particularly modern, almost invisible, headset to my phone. I have become cunning and when I would notice the glances of perplexed onlookers, as I blabber, I place an index finger in my ear and pause as if hearing a response from someone, then nod knowledgeably.

Some dark days when I see others talking heatedly into their hands-free phones I wonder have they lost it too but are even better experts than me at hiding their mental state?

They use sleep deprivation as torture and I know why. After three weeks of continuous poor sleeping, I transmuted into a different entity. When people spoke to me all I heard was blah, blah, blah. But for some reason, I was able to read their minds with particular intensity. Their mouth would be going blah, blah but the tiny muscles around their mouth indicated their anger or sadness. Not hearing their actual words, their body language seemed to shout more clearly. A particular nose touch indicating a lie, a quick pursing of the lips, dislike. I remember standing in front of one chap at a party hearing his braying blah, blah but seeing his eyes furtively dart to a young woman seated on the sofa nearby. His evident longing for her was louder than his braying.

After the fourth week of continuous disturbed sleep, a new dangerous state emerged. Now, I no longer heard or saw people. Acquaintances would accost me in the supermarket and I would examine them as if they were trying to sell me something on the phone. My response invariably would be “no thanks, no thanks” before I shuffled off politely.

Sleep deprivation finally ends in madness I can tell! Another week and I would begin rampaging through the shop shopping centre overturning goods while trying to undress myself in public. One more month of this and I would be a drooling, twitching, incontinent.

Thankfully and I do mean thankfully last night I had a wondrous night’s sleep. As a result, I have leapfrogged back to almost normality. I can keep appointments, hear what others say and have conversations again. I’m still scolding myself in public but the tone has become much more sympathetic like a firm mentor giving constructive criticism and I can actually almost pass for normal once more.  Miracles do happen!