The treatment we’re going with is a diuretic taken once a day in the morning (to minimize nighttime bladder-induced waking). This should help regulate the fluid in my inner ears, along with the bonus of lowering my blood pressure. I took the first one this morning, and it’s not bad at all so far. This will probably only maintain my current level of hearing rather than fix anything, but that’s something. I suppose it should help me avoid the vertigo, too, which can be disabling in some people with Meniere’s.

We are going to schedule a hearing aid fitting and see what styles help the most. I’m hoping that Costco carries whatever brand we end up picking, as I hear (heh) their prices can be up to $1,000 cheaper. Per ear.

On the upside, if not my first set of ‘aids, my next one in five or so years will probably have Bluetooth or some new wireless technology, to allow me to listen to music or phone calls without putting on headphones. Efficiency? Sounds good to me.

[Edit: I completely forgot to mention the part where I'm also starting a low-sodium diet. Denial? Never!]

The first test involved artificial pressure changes, ear popping, drinking water while holding my nose shut, and a handheld computer which judged my ear-popping skills.

The second involved lying down on a massage table wearing a strange pair of blacked-out goggles with cameras to record my eye movement, and if I recall correctly (it was early in the morning and I wasn’t allowed coffee) some combination of sound and artificial pressure designed to try and make me feel dizzy. I didn’t feel dizzy, but my eyes did twitch a bit.

The third and longest test was also pretty weird. Picture yourself lying down. Now imagine two electrodes on your forehead (vertically placed in the middle), one on each earlobe, and one deep inside one of your ears. Now, you know that ticking sound made by a gas stove when you light it? Imagine that sound, really loud, piped directly into one of your ears. Add in some static in the other ear, so that all you can hear is loud, constant, fast ticking and static. The noise just keeps going, just as loud, except for when it stops unpredictably and restarts just as unpredictably.

There was an hour and a half scheduled for this test, but I think it went faster. I’m not sure, because the audiologist told me while sticking things to my head that some people fall asleep during the test and that she usually sees better results when that happens. Get me up early, deprive me of coffee, stick really annoying noises in my ears, have me lie down on a comfortable massage table, and tell me I can fall asleep, and as it turns out, I’ll fall asleep. But, for the record, I don’t really feel the need to go through all that again just to take a nap.

Tomorrow afternoon the fun just keeps on funning, as I head back to Pill Hill for MRI and CT scans. I think that will finish off the testing, and we’ll schedule a meeting with Dr. Huong after that to discuss what she found in my ears.

Coming soon (really!) are a movie of Keegan walking and a slideshow featuring Zoey narrating a comic book she drew.

Here’s the list of possible hearing loss causes so far:

• Meniere’s Disease (inner ear fluid issue)
• Otosclerosis (middle ear/inner ear bone calcification)
• Autoimmune (body attacking cells in my ears)
• DNA Preprogrammed to Endeafen Me
• Matching tumors (one in each ear)

There are a few tests in my future to help sort out what is going on. These include a blood test, an MRI, a CT scan, and some sort of ear pressurization test. I can also schedule a hearing aid test fitting, to see what fabulous style of ear fashion works the best for me. We think that insurance will cover most of these things, once my deductible is met, though it won’t pay for trying out various hearing aids.

I’ll post more follow-ups once results start coming back.

According to "Doc Rock," my Ear, Nose, and Throat doctor, the pattern of my hearing loss is not consistent with nerve damage caused by noise exposure, but does closely match that from a condition called otosclerosis. If I do have that, my hearing will most likely just continue to deteriorate. Treatment options include surgery to replace a bone in the inner ear (usually the stapes) with a prosthetic one, or hearing aids. The surgery, called a stapedectomy, usually improves hearing, but actually has a small chance of causing complete deafness in the affected ear (they usually do one ear at a time). It is also not necessarily a permanent fix, and so the patient often ends up wearing hearing aids later on. As for starting with hearing aids, this might be the only option if the hearing loss isn’t severe enough.

Doc Rock is having me get a second opinion from an otologist (ear specialist). I see her on Wednesday, and I’ll report back here with what she says.

We’re actually both already feeling better, however, with more energy—and less phlegm.

And we’re not starving by any means. Two days ago I made turkey chili in the crock pot, and Rona did up some coconut rice in the rice cooker, and I must say that’s one fine combo. I honestly didn’t miss the cheese one bit, and that’s something, coming from me. Then last night I made steak fajitas, which we had on corn tortillas with homemade salsa and homemade guacamole. Also awesome. Tonight it’s freakishly hot, so it’s cold roast chicken over spinach with grated carrots, sunflower seeds, black olives, and a nice light gluten/dairy/egg-free dressing. Breakfast is the hardest for me to figure out—no more cheesy eggs on a bagel for me—but I’ll make due for three weeks with wheatless cereal with almond milk.

Coming up next, the Keegan’s First Birthday Wrap-Up, complete with photos, of course. Stay tuned!

Then and since then, I’ve experienced the joys of tinnitus, which for me manifests as an occasional tone or tones ringing for a while in one or both ears, sometimes loud, sometimes not. Usually I don’t notice the note or chord unless my surroundings are quiet or my inner musician is feeling particularly boisterous. I’ve heard that tinnitus is aggravated by salt, and unintentional experiments with Fritos and over-salted edamame bear this out.

The tinnitus hasn’t been bothering me much lately, but I have been having trouble hearing what people are saying, most noticeably during my recent nasty cold when my ears were quite stuffed up. While seeing Doctor Tracy about that too-long cold I asked about hearing tests, and she referred me to an ENT (Ear, Nose, and Throat specialist). I went to see Doc Rock (Doctor Rockwell) last Wednesday, and he poked around in my ears a bit and administered a hearing test from a little unit on a rolling cart, while sitting beside me. I could hear his foot tapping through the headphones, but that didn’t really affect my ability–or inability–to hear the tones he was playing over the headphones. He told me to say "yes" whenever I heard a tone in either ear, and he presumably entered the data into his little machine. Afterward a little graph printed out, which showed the opposite of what he had expected. He sent me to get a second opinion at a lab nearby, and yesterday I went in to get that test done.

Noise-induced hearing loss, which I’ve assumed I had for years now as a result of years of jazz band and marching band, causes one’s ears to function less efficiently at higher frequencies–2,000 to 8,000 Hz (Hertz, or cycles per second). The result of this during the testing would be that tones in that range would have to be played at louder than 25 dB (decibels) for the subject (me) to hear them ("normal" ears can hear tones at all frequencies between about 250 Hz through 8000 Hz at 25 dB or quieter).

My test results show that in the lower range, about 500 Hz through about 1500 Hz, both of my ears need the notes cranked up to between 30 & 40 dB for me to hear them at all. In other words, my results are the opposite of those of someone with noise-induced hearing loss.

The technical analysis of all this by Anna The Audiologist is that I have "Mild low-frequency sensorineural hearing loss, bilaterally." (Which, I must point out, has a terrible acronym: MLFSHLB? How do you pronounce that? Mulfshulb?)

I find it interesting that my ears tested about the same, since my perception is that my right ear is worse. Perhaps it was, back in high school, and my memory of that causes my brain to still think that words sound clearer on the phone in my left ear, despite that ear having caught up to the other.

Anna The Audiologist said that I may have had this condition since birth or as the result of a virus or something at some point. She also said that there isn’t really anything that can be done about it at this point, other than to get my hearing tested every year and see if it gets worse. I’m going to go back to Doc Rock and see what he says.

But rather than leave this post on such a sour note (cue disgusted groans) I will move on to the Auditory Up: Today Zoey and I went to the Apple Store at U. Village and left with a shiny new 20-gig iPod! The interface with the clicky wheel was unintuitive and awkward at first, but after I figured it out it does seem quite usable and probably as revolutionary as it’s been billed to be.

Instead of reading the directions and charging the thing first, I of course plugged it in to my Mac as soon as I managed to remove all the little clear plastic protective films. Luckily I only have about 3.5 gigs of music on my PowerBook, so the iPod’s half-charged batteries didn’t die while it automatically grabbed all the songs. It’s now plugged into the wall to charge, and I’m listening to the Tomasz Stanko Quartet jam out. The little earbuds are surprisingly responsive throughout the range, even for a mulfshulb like me.

As for Tomasz Stanko, he and Erik Truffaz appeared at our door in CD form courtesy of Luis, Rona’s student’s / Zoey’s babysitter’s Dad. I hadn’t had a chance to listen to either of them until I told iPod to dish me up some Stanko. I’m really enjoying this album, and look forward to checking out Erik Truffaz.

A few weeks ago, Talia, Rona’s student’s / Zoey’s babysitter’s Mom, presented me with two Green Day albums (American Idiot and Dookie) and another by a group called Brother, featuring rock didgeridoo.

After listening to parts of American Idiot and Dookie over the PowerBook’s tinny speakers, I realized that I’ve held an unfair artistic grudge against Green Day for quite some time. I think that at some point listening to 107.7 The End, as I used to do a lot while spending hours commuting throughout Seattle, Bellevue, and Redmond, I mixed Green Day up with some other band and/or bands and decided that I didn’t like them. Sorry, Green Day–I don’t know what synapse misfired where, but I’ve realized now that I actually find you both lyrically and musically inspired, and am looking forward to many hours on treadmills and elliptical machines at the gym discovering American Idiot and rediscovering Dookie. As for the rock didgeridoo, what I’ve heard of Brother (the album is called This Way Up) is pretty fun, and I look forward to iPodding that as well.

So, my ears’ functionality may (or may not) be very slowly degrading, but in the meantime I’ve got a terrific new toy and some great tunes to keep them occupied while inspiring me to hit the gym.