“Thin blue beer stones,” said the doctor as she adjusted the earphones on my head. “Just play chess.”
None of that made much sense given the context. Hardly any, in fact, so I gave the only response I could think of.
“What?”
“When you hear the tones, just say ‘yes,’” she said in a louder, clearer voice.
“Ok.”
That made much more sense than beer stones. I was in her office for a hearing test, so for the next few minutes I sat in a sound booth and said “yes” when I heard a tone in one ear or the other.
Back in my 20s, I became aware that I had trouble using my left ear for telephone conversations. Over the years it got worse, but I could hear ok in my right ear and just let it comp for the bad left one in most settings.
I would compensate at meetings and such by asking to sit so that my right ear would be closest to the speaker. Playing music, I usually tried to cock my right ear toward the other instruments.
Those coping skills helped me make it ok in most situations.
Since we live in the edge of the country and have a creek running through the place, I used to enjoy going out at night to listen to the crickets and frogs sing in the summer.
One cold night last winter when I came home from a basketball game, the crickets were in particularly good voice. I thought: how odd. You don’t normally hear crickets on cold winter nights.
It was then that I first thought I might be experiencing tinnitus.
It was a bummer to think that those beautiful cricket serenades were merely a malfunction inside my head, but I figured it was worth checking out.
So, I mentioned it to my doctor, who referred me for a hearing test, which was how I came to be sitting in this doctor’s office, talking about beer stones.
The tests showed that, yes, the hearing in my left ear is crummy, especially when it comes to voices. A hearing aid should help get back part of the
A hearing aid should help get back part of the function and help with the tinnitus, but it will never be 100 percent, the doctor said.
My right ear is better but it, too, needs an aid, as well, she said.
I have an appointment in a few days to make sure there isn’t anything wrong inside my head that’s affecting my hearing. If not, then it’s on to a consultation for the hearing aids.
I am not looking forward to wearing hearing aids, but I am eager to hear better and to see if I’ve been missing some of the tones from my guitars.
And I want to know that there really are crickets around when I hear them harmonizing with the frogs along the creek.