Road Apples by Tim Sanders
Sept. 5, 2011

Head in a goldfish bowl

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People with hearing loss can be annoying. I know that because I have hearing loss and, as my wife often reminds me, I am VERY annoying. Over the last few years, as the hearing in my right ear gradually deteriorated, I found I not only had trouble hearing voices, but I also had difficulty determining where they were coming from. When I heard my wife saying something which sounded suspiciously like “the cat is in the dryer,” it always convinced me I should go find her, point my good ear in her direction and ask her to explain that remark. Unfortunately, when I asked “Where are you?” her response was almost always “In here!” This often led to: “WHERE?” “HERE!" “WHERE’S HERE?” etc. Eventually I would wear her down and she’d say something helpful, like “KITCHEN!” But of course by then she’d forgotten all about her original comment.

A couple of years ago I went to an ENT specialist in Birmingham who said I had fluid behind my right eardrum and I needed to have a hole and a drain tube inserted. At first I agreed, but after giving the matter some serious thought at home, I backed out. I didn’t want my head clamped into some industrial drill press vise so that somebody I’d only met once could lower a spinning two foot, 7/8 inch drill bit into my cranium. At least not while I had one good ear left, I didn’t!

Well, now I no longer have one good ear left, due to fluid buildup on the other side. So about a week ago I visited a different ENT doctor in Gadsden.
While Marilyn and I were in the examining room waiting for the doctor, I noticed a really interesting poster on his wall. It had half a head on it, with a lot of the skin and bones removed so you could see the ear-related plumbing inside. The ear in the picture was a very large ear, about the size of a regulation catcher’s mitt, and after studying the poster for quite some time, I began to make some sense out of how the human head is designed:

Let’s say that the human head is like an automobile engine. The hardest working part of the automobile engine would be the pistons, which need fluid pumped through the engine passageways to cool the block. The hardest working part of the human head, in most cases, is the brain. The brain, when it is very active, heats up, and therefore fluid is flushed through the sinusites, the eustacean pipes, the nasaloids and glottal canals to keep the head, or block, from blowing a gasket. Just like the automobile engine will not overheat when it is not running, neither will the human head overheat when you are not thinking. Sometimes your brain just quits for awhile. You’ve probably noticed that on certain Sunday mornings, when the preacher starts off on his old reliable sermon about Ezekiel’s ram and the tent post, you invariably tune out. You are blissfully unaware of everything around you until the congregation stands for the benediction. Whenever this happens, you will notice that your mouth is extremely dry. That is because your brain has shut down, and there’s been no need for coolant. On the other hand, there are times when, even while sleeping, your brain has been very busy. That is why, when you awaken after that exhausting dream where you’re at the beach inspecting Angelina Jolie for sand fleas, you will probably find a little bit of drool on your pillow. It is from your radiator overflow valve. After looking at that ear poster, it all made perfectly good sense to me.

But I digress. When the doctor came in, he did not make fun of me for backing out of the previously scheduled procedure in Birmingham. He looked into my ears, flushed and vacuumed them, and also stuck a long, spindly scope with a light on the end down each nostril all the way to my toes to make sure there was nothing there. There wasn’t. Then he told me that my eardrums had a whole lot of fluid built up behind them, and I needed a hole and a tube inserted in both. He assured me that, no, he would not use an industrial drill press with a huge 7/8 inch conical tip, only a standard Black and Decker cordless, three-speed model with a much smaller 3/8 inch bit. And since he would be suctioning fluid from only one ear at a time, there was very little danger of my head going flat. At least I think that’s what he said. I couldn’t hear much of it, but Marilyn interpreted as follows:


ME: “What did he say?”

MARILYN: [Hooks her thumbs together and flaps her fingers like wings.]

ME: “Bird? Not bird ... AHA, FLY!”

MARILYN: [Nods and waves left hand over right shoulder.]

ME: “Past. Fly past ... no, past tense of fly. FLEW!”

MARILYN: [Nods and pulls on her eyelid.]

ME: “Lid ... shorter than lid. Li ... li ... er, ID! FLEW-ID! FLUID!”


By the time she’d explained the procedure to me via hand signals, the doctor and his staff had gone home for the evening, and left a note for us to lock up and leave the key under the mat.

Okay, so there may be a little exaggeration in there, but not much.

And all of that wouldn’t have been necessary if only we’d had an earthquake here in northeast Alabama last month. I’m not talking about anything really destructive; a respectable 5.8 magnitude quake like the one they recently had on the East Coast would do. According to an August 26 ABC News article by Jeanette Torres, a gentleman named Robert Valderzak had been deaf since a fall and a skull fracture on Father’s Day. When the August 23 quake rattled his Washington D.C. VA Hospital room, Valderzak experienced what he termed “a miracle.”

“‘He had conductive hearing loss, caused by fluid in his middle ear, as well as loss due to nerve damage,’ said Dr. Ross Fletcher, chief of staff at the VA Hospital. ‘A combination of a drug he was taking and the earthquake event itself likely led to him losing the fluid and gaining back his hearing.’”

In lieu of an earthquake before Tuesday, I’ll pin my hopes on the deep ear drilling. If it works, I’ll no longer be annoying. No matter what Marilyn may say.