6-13-11

TWO WEEKS IN MY LIFE – YAY!

In the two weeks that you last saw me, I was struck by a veritable whirlwind of irksome changes. I might not have complained about myself in the past, but now”s the time. At first, I thought it was a tornado of life changes but in calm contemplation I have concluded that irksome does not qualify; whirlwind suffices. What follows is in chronological order.

Part one: I have known that my hearing has slowly deteriorated, that it has become harder to understand discussions in restaurants, that TV dialogue often degenerates into a series of mumbles and that I keep asking people to repeat themselves. “Say again,” had almost become my mantra. My daughter, in particular, speaks to me while engaging in tasks and I often have to ask for a repeat and she, in her sweet friendly way says, “Will you please get a hearing aid.”

The truth is that I knew the day was coming because of prior hearing tests and so, reluctantly, I scheduled another one; the chart showed that my high pitched hearing ability is essentially lost. I no longer have the capacity to hear upper registers; in other words, I am half-deaf. Kaiser has a hearing aid shop and there I went and after much fiddling with this and that I ordered a pair. I gathered from the woman who helped me that two hearing aids are astonishingly superior to one so that's what I did, I ordered two one for each ear.

When they arrived I learned about batteries that last a week, domes and wax traps, all possible sources of malfunction. There was also the problem of sticking the thingies into my ears. For the first week, they kept falling out. Batteries died and the wax traps trapped wax and now I carry around a supply of each. I had to learn when to adjust the volume: raise it in noisy places but not so high that it sounds like a tinny when breathing.. She explained to me that wearing them trains the brain and that sounded exotic until I realized that the brain learns to ignore the oddness of the sound. I often forget them; I have not yet integrated them into my life style. Having them, caring for them is a shlep. I am still in the try-out period but I think the benefits marginally overwhelm the irks. Remember when I told you I had lost interest in music? I turned the radio on as I usually do at breakfast and heard glorious sound; I can hear what I've been missing and music is back in my life.

Part two: As part of my body existing through time, certain changes occur of insidious onset and that has happened to my kidneys. Over the years, they have slowly been losing their capacity to filter my blood and finally my doc figured it was time to check with an expert, a nephrologist. OK, I saw him and he told me that I have kidney disease of unknown origin, told me to give up dairy products,chocolate and nuts and so it goes, a bereft lover of milk chocolate and other such. There are some sacrifices too terrible to contemplate except if my kidneys get worse I become a candidate for dialysis, a much more terrible outcome then changing my diet. So, you will no longer see me scarf down almond filled kisses. But, worse, much worse, he said that one of my diabetes meds is bad for sick kidneys and must give it up. OK, says I to my PC doc, what's plan B?

Part 3: Plan B is sticking myself with an insulin laden syringe every night.

Now, that's fun. I was given a hundred of the stickers, a bottle of insulin, shown how and where to do it and sent off to be more or less healthy. Now mornings and bedtimes are devoted to fiddling with hearing aids, glucometers and syringes as well as ingesting the multifarious medicines that keep me ticking.

As noted above, it is all somewhat irksome, particularly for a young man. Still, it is doable and has to be done so it shall be.

(This was written about a year ago and all the above has become so routinized that I hardly notice the talks. Yeah.)

My hearing has grown pretty bad

Like my diabetes and kidneys, so sad

Am I now become old?

Do not dare be so bold

That I breaths still makes me feel glad.