It started as one of those common annoyances that we often ignore during our busy lives. For a moment my hearing was fine. The next, I couldn’t hear out of my left ear. I had experienced something similar before when one of my ears was filled with wax. I used to fix the problem myself by using one of those plastic bulbs to force a stream of hot water into the ear. It would take a lot of pressure, but eventually some wax would come out and my hearing returned to normal.
My doctor told me it wasn’t safe to do it myself as it could injure structures in my ear and said, “You shouldn’t put anything smaller than your elbow in your ear. Come into the office and we’ll safely remove the wax.” Over the years, I had come to the office occasionally and agreed that visiting the office was quicker, easier and safer. Since I had an appointment with my doctor in two weeks, I thought I would wait until then to remove the wax. My right ear was fine, and while the hearing loss was bothersome, I figured I’d wait until an opportune time to see the doctor.
But my intuition offered different guidance. I had a strong feeling that I shouldn’t wait, but make an appointment right away, even if it wasn’t with my regular doctor. As is often the case, my hunch was right. I was seen at the clinic by another doctor who examined both my ears and told me there was no wax in either ear. He ordered a quick hearing test and found that there was severe hearing loss in the left ear and told me I was lucky I got in right away.
I was shocked to hear that my problem was something other than an “ear wax”. He explained that sudden severe hearing loss, also called “Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss,” is when you lose hearing — usually in just one ear — over the course of three days or less. It can happen to anyone, but it’s more common in adults over forty.”
“For most people,” he explained, “hearing loss happens gradually over a period of time and affects both ears. This is different. It comes on quickly and usually affects only one ear. It’s usually caused by damage to your inner ear or problems with the nerve fibers that carry information from your ear to your brain.’
It wasn’t long before I was overwhelmed by what I was hearing. It was like coming to the doctor with indigestion and the doctor telling you he thinks you might have cancer.
“I’m going to order an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) to rule out an auditory neuroma. These tumors are uncommon, but an early symptom of this tumor is sudden hearing loss. I also want you to see your audiologist and get a more complete exam.”
I took notes and thought, I really don’t have time for this crap. I have things to do and work that requires my attention and it’s not what I had planned. But the doctor wasn’t done.
“In the meantime, I’ll order fifteen days of high-dose prednisone. It’ll help protect the auditory nerve and other structures while we find out more. It’ll make it harder for you to sleep, but it’s necessary for your ears.”
The following week, I started the prednisone and had the MRI and hearing test. The good news was that I didn’t have a tumor growing in my ear and my right ear hadn’t gotten any worse since my last checkup. But the tests verified a significant loss in my left ear.
What changed my life for the better started horribly. Before taking the prednisone, my sleep was extremely regular. I could go to bed at 9pm, read for an hour, then turn off the lights at 10pm. I would sleep straight through until 5am with a few short wake ups to pee. I never took anything to sleep and never used an alarm clock to wake up.
Once the steroids were in my system I slept anxiously from 10pm to 2am and then was wide awake. Not only was I awake, but I was agitated and restless, and my moods went from extreme highs to terrifying lows. The doctor said to hang in there, that we would taper off the prednisone after ten days and I would be completely off five days later.
When I was awake at 2:00 am with my emotions bouncing off the walls, my inner guidance told me I should walk (I usually walk everyday in the morning, but never this early). I got up, got dressed and walked around the neighborhood guided only by the moonlight and the occasional street light.
The fifteen days turned from “A Nightmare on Elm Street” to “Magical Mystery Tour.” I heard the night sounds like never before, cicadas and crickets doing their dance. I watched the moon and stars, saw early morning deer and house cats out and about, even heard a fox with its eerie bark that seemed to have a message of support. Night walks calmed me and when I got home, I wrote notes in my journal. I felt like I was getting back in touch with the natural world of my childhood when I was walking at night, talking to animals and feeling at peace with the world.
I am now off the prednisone and back to my normal sleep pattern. My hearing has improved slightly and I hope it will continue. I have learned some important lessons:
- Trust my intuition and inner guidance.
- Take care of even a small inconvenience. It can be serious. Check it out.
- All problems can provide important insights into our health and well-being.
- Always look for the bigger lessons through the inevitable problems that life throws at us.
After things began to return to normal, I wanted to examine the deeper wisdom in my sudden hearing loss. I asked my inner guidance, What in the world is it that I don’t want to hear anymore? The answer came in a flash: I want to get away from it all noise happening in the human world these days.
My life with less noise
For me, noise it is what distracts me from being in tune with my inner wisdom and therefore prevents me from truly knowing myself. Humanity seems increasingly out of touch with the laws of nature and alienated from the community of life on planet Earth. As historian Thomas Berry warned,
“We never knew enough. Nor were we intimate enough with all our cousins in the great earth family. Nor could we hear the various creatures of the earth, each telling its own story. The time has come, however, for us to listen or die.”
Losing my hearing, even temporarily, helped me appreciate what a gift it is to hear—from the voices of my wife, children, and grandchildren to the sounds of birds, bees, and trees. Having to take a powerful steroid, the side effects of which forced me to leave my house and walk in nature, surprisingly brought me back to my true self.
Wanting to learn more about how I could continue and deepen my daily practices to reduce the noise in my life, I found a great book, Golden: The Power of Silence in a World of Noise by Justin Zorn and Leigh Marz. The book’s title comes from a quote by the Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle in his 1836 novel, Sartor Resartus,
“Speech is silver, silence is gold.”
Zorn and Marz describe three types of noise that challenge our lives:
Audible noise.
“It’s a measurable fact,” they say, “the world is getting stronger.”
Informational noise.
They say, “In 2010, Eric Schmidt, then CEO of Google, made a startling assessment: ‘Every two days we now create as much information as we did from the dawn of civilization until 2003.’ We are overwhelmed with information.”
Internal noise.
“With so many stimuli consuming our attention, it’s harder to find silence within our own consciousness,” Zorn and Marz say.
For me, the first step in connecting with the golden silence was reconnecting with nature. In future articles I will share more details about my journey and ways you can reduce the noise in your life. I write regular articles that you can get for free if you subscribe to my newsletter. I look forward to your feelings, thoughts and comments.
