Five Week Status Report

The Five Week Status Report would look a lot like the Four Week Status Report. Instead of more boring details about exactly how many city blocks I can walk now, I thought I'd use this week's post to provide more boring details about this whole single sided hearing/single sided deafness business (I've seen it referred to both ways - but SSD seems more common. The glass half full/half empty debate rages on). A lot of you have expressed curiosity, so here's what I know so far.

As it turns out, SSD is not really that uncommon. In fact, many of you have already told me about other people you know personally who are deaf on one side. In the US, about 60,000 people per year become afflicted. It can have many causes such as viral infections, Meniere’s disease, trauma, measles, chicken pox or, as in my case, through surgical intervention.

The reality of being deaf on one side is very different from what I imagined it would be. I thought I would still hear everything, but maybe just a little lower on the old volume. The issues are a bit more complex.

First of all, there is a range of sound that occurs on my right side that I simply can't hear due to a phenomenon called the "head shadow effect." A creepy name. A friend articulated it better: "Oh, it's like an eclipse." Exactly. My head has become an object that literally blocks certain sound waves that originate on my deaf side from ever being perceived by my hearing side. Surgery has made me more obtuse than ever.

Secondly, the world has become a giant ventriloquist act to me. I have a lot of trouble determining the location from which a noise originates. If someone drops a book across the room on my right, I may reflexively turn to my left. I've become like a crazy person who constantly cocks their head to imagined noises saying, "Did you hear that?!" I keep thinking birds chirping outside my window are mice inside the apartment. Crazy person.

I also have a lot of trouble with multiple noise input. First of all, it just makes my head pound. I think that's a short term issue. But the likely long term effect is that I can't "prioritize." So if the TV is on and someone is speaking to me at the same time, I can't hear what they're saying. I am not able to prioritize the noise that I want to hear from another noise that I want to tune out. Conversations in a restaurant, for example, would be very difficult. Giant cacophony. (cute name for a cafe. no?) Note to those with knowledge of broadcast production: think of it as a completely fokakta mix with zero ability for adjustment.

According to all the depressing literature, people with SSD can experience issues with things like "crossing the street, bicycling or driving a car and may also have problems in group situations like business meetings, restaurants or cocktail parties." So as long as I always cross with the light and am satisfied with drinking alone, I'll be fine. In other words, my life won't change ;)

Time will tell how I cope with these issues and how debilitating they are in my particular case. If it seems advantageous, there are some remedies available to me thanks to modern technology. This is where that snap comes in. As mentioned in some previous posts, there is a device called a Baha that could be placed on my deaf side behind the ear via a snap implanted in the skull. It transfers sound through bone conduction, stimulating the cochlea in the normal hearing ear. Click this link to see an animated diagram that helps visualize this phenomenon:

http://www.entific.com/directBoneConduction.asp

(A quick side note. This diagram helps clear up another point a lot of people have found confusing. When you look at this, it's a little easier to understand why they had to cut through two bones to remove my tumor. This diagram is a cross section from the rear perspective. Those are the backs of someone's ears. First they cut a flap in the back of my skull, which is not shown in the picture. Then they moved my brain stem over revealing the skull base in the middle of my head. Then they sawed into that skull base to get inside the canal that houses my auditory nerve. My tumor had already bulbed out into my cranium, but they had to remove it from the source so as not to trash all the other nerves that run through that canal.)

The Baha device itself is wireless and apparently they are working on an updated model that would be Bluetooth enabled. I am 100% not kidding - I'd be able to pipe in my ipod or the TV directly to my head. I'm looking into whether I'd be able to host conference calls.

So let's just get to the source of all the curiosity. The snap. I mean, would I really have a snap on my head!? It sounds like a science fiction novel. Well, seeing is believing. Are you ready for a picture of the snap? I don't know if you're ready. I don't know if any of us could ever be ready, but here it is:



I will be hosting a Bluetooth enabled conference call in the future. The topic: Peripheral Snap Accessory Brainstorm Session/Things That Would Be Useful to Have Snapped To My Head. You'll all be invited and I'll send call in details. In the meantime, here are some thought starters:

• A cupholder
• A GPS system
• An Amex Xpress Pay - I can just swipe my head for payment
• A wrap around rear view mirror
• A head dust ruffle (would require another snap on my hearing side, but could add flair to drab outfits)
• A badge/ID holder - similar to Amex Xpress pay, head swipe for entry
• A bottle opener

I'm also going to look into whether I can use this for future face lifts. I could just have the bags under my eyes snapped back.

Other thoughts welcome.

I Am Joan's Tumor

Hi! I'm an acoustic neuroma, a benign (non-cancerous) tumor of the 8th cranial, or acoustic, nerve. I'm the one causing the problems in Joan's head.

By December, I was about 1.5 centimeters long, which is considered "small to moderate" (sometimes tumors like me are the size of a golf ball by the time they find me). They found me after Joan had a less-than-perfect hearing test and follow-up MRI.

I am extremely slow growing, I don't spread or metastasize. Once they get me outta there, the chances that I'll come back are miniscule.

All of the doctors are unanimous in their diagnosis and extremely optimistic in their prognosis for Joan. I, on the other hand, will end up in a Petri dish in some research lab.

Joan's surgical scar will be relatively small, behind the right ear, and hair will grow right over it. But just to be certain, her pricey Meatpacking-district haircutter will be scrubbing in to ensure that the surgeons pay close attention to her future hairstyling needs.

OK, I sound like a walk in the park so far, but I do have risks and downsides. Here are the problems I'm causing for Joan:

She has to have 4-6 hours of intracranial microsurgery, under general anesthesia. She's young and healthy, so the risks of surgical/anesthesia complications are minimal, but by all accounts she'll have an unpleasant recovery period after the surgery (4-5 days in the hospital, 2-3 months out of work).

She has less than a 50-50 chance of retaining any hearing in her right ear (she's pretty bummed about this one).

I'm very close to the nerve that controls facial muscles. There is a chance that if the surgeons have to disturb the facial nerve to remove me, Joan could have some temporary facial paralysis (the good news: the docs put the chance of this happening at less than 1%).

The acoustic nerve is also the one that controls balance, so after I'm outta there, Joan's equilibrium will be out of whack for some time until her brain re-adjusts and the "other side" takes over. This is one of the main reasons why her recovery period will be so long.

Finally, please rest assured that despite the seriousness of the situation, the brain surgery puns at Chez Voltz are flying hot and heavy ("I'm gonna give those doctors a piece of my mind", "I need this like I need a hole in the head", "I need to get something off my mind", etc.)....