To Hear or Not To Hear, That is the Question

I've now seen my oncologist and my breast surgeon in the last week. They both reported that I am officially boring and to go away and come back in 3 months. For Dr. Alison Laidley to say that is a REALLY good thing!!! And she was smiling and laughing when she said it.

I've had an annoying ringing in my ears ever since I had chemo. It's getting louder, so I asked my oncologist about it. He said it could be a side effect from the chemo but it could have nothing to do with it. We're betting on the side effect. . . . Anyway he sent me to see an ENT doctor today. He looked in my ears first. Now I had purposely cleaned out my ears this morning after my shower since I was going to see him. He looks in there and says, "Well, you might hear better without all the wax in your ears." He takes me into a little room and has me lay down so he can get a ditch digger and roots out some embarrassing looking stuff from my ears. He said it really wasn't wax, just dried skin that was compacted in both ears.

He took me back to the first room and turned off the lights to see if I could still hear the ringing. Yep. Still there---he turned off the lights because the fluorescent bulbs made a slight ringing of their own. Next he gave me a hearing test on a computer. Really interesting. You push a little button when you can hear high & low pitched sounds. Then you have to touch pictures on the screen when they say certain words. There were LOTS of words that I just couldn't hear at all what they were saying. I just knew I was going deaf. Hearing aids, here I come!

I finish the test and he takes me back to room #1 to wait for the results to print out. He comes in and tells me that I have perfectly normal hearing. That was a relief. The ones I couldn't hear, were ones that normal people couldn't hear either. He told me that there is one "cure" for the tinnitis that I have: mask it with music, mask it with music, mask it with music. There is no cure for it, no medicine they can give you. I already knew this from researching it on the internet. He said sometimes it can occur from an illness, but most of the time there is nothing they can do about it. He told me, "I want you to know that I believe you when you say you have ringing in your ears. Just because other people can't hear it, doesn't mean it's not real." He said you just learn to drown it out and try not to be in complete silence because it will drive you nuts. How true, how true! Of course with all my hot flashes now, I just keep a fan going all the time and that helps a lot!