What's it like to get old? - Continued

This is another in my series "What's it like to get old?"

Sudden hearing loss

I’m going along in my life, fat dumb and happy, when one night at age 52 (Groundhog Day, actually), I sit up in bed with a left ear that feels impacted like I’ve been in an airplane that lost cabin pressure.  Absolutely nothing I could do would “pop” the ear. The sensation was maddening and terrifying.

I was in my doctor’s office as soon as I could get in. They had no idea. They did determine that I had no high frequency response in that ear.

I went to an Ear, Nose and Throat doctor (ENT #1) as quickly as I could. Tests showed that I had lost a substantial portion of my hearing in one ear, but no fluid behind the eardrum and nothing apparent that they could find to be the cause

As soon as I could, I went to see ENT #2, another specialist. Repeated the same tests. Same results. He prescribed Prednisone and ordered more tests. Including a head MRI and a test for Meniere’s syndrome. The MRI was for the possibility of a neuroma in my inner ear (negative). Meniere’s test was also negative.

There was also this horrible exam whereby the doc shoves this articulated optical probe up my nose into my sinuses and looks around. Nothing to see.

His diagnosis, Idiopathic Sudden Hearing Loss.

“Idiopathic” means they don’t know why. Just – boom, it’s gone.

The void in my hearing spectrum in that ear is now replaced with white noise, tinnitus,

which fills in the frequency register. In the beginning the noise drove me crazy. Imagine living a half-mile from Niagara Falls and having that sound in one ear 24/7/365. The only time I didn’t hear it was when I was in the shower.

I got some help at night by playing environmental noises like rain, babbling brooks, etc. But I couldn’t sleep in the headphones.

Eventually my brain managed to shove the noise into the background enough that I can survive. The noise is always there, but I can generally ignore it.

About 12 years after the initial event, I had a recurrence. Same symptoms, same doctor, same tests. Nothing new. I’ve learned that if I have a relapse, I get some peace of mind from taking prednisone. I don’t know if it helps, but it’s the only thing I can do. Eventually the blocked sensation goes away, and I haven’t lost any more of my hearing.

The only up side of “Sudden Hearing Loss,” – you don’t have to spend a lot of money on high quality stereo equipment. There’s not enough high frequency response in my left ear to create good stereo imaging.

In the beginning I lived in fear of the other ear going off. And what about if I lose low frequencies all at once too? I could conceivably go stone deaf overnight.  But it’s been 20 years now since the onset and except for a minor recurrence, nothing else has happened.

The only possible explanation I’ve heard is that it may have something to do with a blockage in a minor blood vessel in the inner ear. Or possibly a viral infection.  But the hearing loss is profound and called “nerve deafness,” and is permanent.

I’ve heard of older people becoming hard of hearing, but I did not know that you could lose a part of your hearing, BANG, just like that. And that the best doctors don’t know the cause and there’s no “fix.”  My upper frequency response is so suppressed that there is no way a hearing aid can boost up the lost octaves.

Nothing about this in the human body owner's manual, either.

No cause, no cure. Learn to live with it.

Thanks a lot, Doc. What do I owe you? That much? Just to have a name for what I’ve got that you can’t fix?

Microscopic Hematuria

This next story is a real nightmare. It all began one morning when I was laying on the couch and started to feel really funny. I can barely describe it. It was like a sensation in my lower chest and seemed to climb upward. I’d had a couple of whatever was happening in days before, but this one really scared me.

I got my wife to drive me to the ER at our “family hospital.” You get one of those as you age, too – a hospital you end up going to for various procedures and where your family doctor is on staff.

My first trip to an ER as an adult and it was indeed as horrifying an experience as people say. Here I am, afraid I’m having a heart attack and I have to wait in the waiting room for them to get around to me.

I eventually get processed in and get situated in a bed and people start coming in for tests. I gave them urine and blood and they gave me an EKG, etc.

Eventually (hours later) somebody came to see me and handed me a piece of Xerox paper with a paragraph on it that said, and I’m paraphrasing:

“There are 200 viruses that can attack the human body - and you have one of them. Take Tylenol and drink fluids. You’re discharged.”

The ER doc stopped by my bed, as he gave me the happy news that I was not dying. But he said: “Your urine showed traces of blood, what we call microscopic hematuria. I recommend you see your family doctor.”

So – as soon as could, I saw my family doctor and he recommended that I get an ultrasound of my kidneys.

Got the ultrasound and the test showed something abnormal about my left kidney, as well as three cysts in my right kidney. Kidney cysts, I’ve learned, are very common.

I got scheduled for a needle biopsy of my left kidney, now thoroughly convinced that I have kidney cancer. The biopsy was scheduled in two weeks and I was a nervous wreck. My family doc prescribed Xanax and I spent two weeks stoned out of my mind,

Day of the biopsy, I’m in the hospital ready for the test. Scared shitless. They wheel me into the OR. They proceed to give me another ultrasound. I’m familiar with all this by now. They’re going to use the ultrasound to guide the needle they’re going stick in my left kidney to get their sample.

I hear them talking. First the tech working the ultrasound is asking questions. Then a doctor comes over and they’re discussing my kidney while I’m listening. Then the head doctor comes over and there’s this big confab over my panic stricken body. Then the head doctor comes to me and she says:

“We don’t see anything to biopsy. Your left kidney has what’s called a Dromedary Hump. It’s not uncommon for a left kidney to be this shape and it is not abnormal. You’re good to go.”

All that, and there’s nothing wrong with my kidney? If a Dromedary Hump is common why don’t the people doing the kidney ultrasound know that?!

Suffice it to say I was overjoyed with the news. However, I still had no explanation for my microscopic hematuria – back to my family doc.

The doc now says, if it’s not the kidney, perhaps it’s the bladder. And I was scheduled for another specialist, a urologist, to undergo a horrible exam I can barely bring myself to describe.

I had an optical probe inserted into my penis, past my prostate and up into my bladder. While I’m fully conscious. The urologist worked the thing around examining all the structures in there and ultimately pronounced my insides normal.

So, back to my family doctor once again. Still have the hematuria, but they’ve been unable to find a cause. Normal kidney, normal bladder.

Turns out, some people just have a little blood in their urine and nobody knows why. I’m one of those: Idiopathic Microscopic Hematuria.

So again, after numerous doctor visits, embarrassing and costly tests, and the false alarm scare of my life, I end up with a name for my condition, but no known cause and no way to fix it. All this because one day I felt funny with one of 200 common viruses people can get.

Posterior vitreous detachment (PVD) and floaters

About 12 years ago (age 60), I was playing poker and noticed a bright ring of flashing white light in my left eye. The following day, I noticed a lot of big fuzzy floaters in that eye and made an appointment to see my eye doctor.

The diagnosis was Posterior Vitreous Detachment (PVD), a common condition of the eye in which the vitreous membrane separates from the retina. I learned that as we age, the viscosity of the fluids in our eyes changes and in many cases something in there pops loose from the back of the eye. It’s not a detached retina (a much more serious condition). The PVD itself is accompanied by the flashing light effect and is short-lived. The problem is that the event causes a bunch of microscopic junk to end up floating around inside the eyeball – causing floaters.

Everybody has floaters, but the ones you get from a PVD are much more noticeable. You see big old fuzzy blobs floating around, strands and areas of your vision with jelly–like amoeba-looking things moving around. They tell you that eventually, this junk will settle out. Well, some if it may have settled out, but much of it has not.

A year or so later, the same thing happened in the other eye. I’ve had two PVDs with accompanying fields of floaters.

Only cause – just age. Anything they can do to fix it?  Nope. Learn to live with it. My family doctor says maybe increasing my intake of Omega 3 fatty acids might help, so I added Krill Oil to my daily meds. Can’t hurt. Hey, krill is good enough for Blue Whales.

Your body and mind adapt to these changes to a certain extent. I can almost ignore the floaters in certain lighting conditions.  What you see is not the floater itself, but the shadow of the floater on your retina. Bright skies are the worst – floaters really stand out. In dim indoor lighting, things aren’t too bad.

One effect of the floaters I’ve noticed while working in my shop. When looking down at my table saw, I’ll sometime have a floater cross the edge of my field of vision. My mind immediately interprets that shadow as a mouse on the floor. Either that, or I really do  have mice in my basement!