March 17, 2014

I Really Miss Music

March 17, 2014

Happy St. Patrick's Day to everyone!  I have a brother-in-law who was born on St. Patrick's Day and although his name is James, he is often called Pat.  I don't know if I would like that - a totally different name than I was given at birth.  I guess by now he is used to it.

Again this morning I slept later than I had intended.  I must be up early tomorrow because Ron has an 8:00 appointment and that means I have to open up the business, and here I sit typing my blog late in the evening. 

At the office today things were rather slow and I worked on some files.  I stored some old files and put things in manilla envelopes, labeling them to help me find anything I may need at some time in the future.  Usually our office mailman comes mid-afternoon.  Last week our mailman came between 8:30 and 9:00 most mornings.  Today he came as we were locking up to close for the day.  It is so hard to plan on things like bank deposits when I have no idea when the mail will arrive.  Strange.

Ron had taken my car in for some maintenance on his way to the office this morning and it was not ready at closing time, so I borrowed my mom's for a day or two until mine is ready.  My brother-in-law is staying at her house and taking care of things while she is at my sister's for a while.  We all went to supper after I picked up the car but didn't stay long since all of us had other things we had to get done today.  Jim was doing a lot of writing.  Ron was working - he is at the office now, and I had other chores to do.

I have a few comments to make this evening on the Cochlear Implant.  Since it was a boring day at the office, I don't have a lot of other things to share, so there is time for this.  I continue to hear the music in my head most of the time.  This is not music that I select, although it is good music - mostly old hymns.  The last few weeks I have really been frustrated at not being able to enjoy hearing music.  If music is playing or being sung VERY close to my and rather loudly, I may be able to pick it up and follow the melody but most of the time, it is just noise.  People will ask me if the music playing in a restaurant is bothering me.  I am unaware the "noise" I am hearing is music. 

Sunday morning, our praise team in the worship service sang an a cappella piece that I had heard before and I know it was beautiful.  The arrangement (from my memory) is awesome.  But I could not hear enough to follow it and if I had not heard it before, I would have been at a total loss.  I really wanted to hear the piece.  I could hear sounds, but they bear little resemblance to music.  At the end there is a high soprano note - at least I think (from my memory) there is, but with a high note like that, I hear NOTHING.  There is just silence where that note should be. 

In the past, I rarely kept a radio or CD player going all the time; maybe because of the hearing having been bad for a long time.  But in my office is a huge stack of CDs of my favorites.  I love the sound tracks from musicals and movies such as My Fair Lady, Sleepless in Seattle,The Music Man, Oklahoma, etc.  There are several CDs like that as well as many of the Gaither Homecoming recordings.  I enjoy light classical music and the Texas A&M Singing Cadets.  Lots of Christmas music CDs are in the stacks as well as some Golden Oldies.  On quiet days like today, I probably would have put some of those on to play.  Now, they are just "noise" added to my world.  These are a few of the CDs at home, but most are at the office.

Music is such a gift for us to hear.  I think of the many people I have known who have been battling serious medical conditions (following an accident, or related to an illness) and they say the playing of Christian music has helped to calm then in the rough times.  I have a friend who many years ago was in a very serious accident.  This friend would thrash about in the bed until the music came on and then a peace would settle over the patient.  Music can bring peace and a feeling of calmness.  I miss that. 

The last few days I have been having a recurrence of something that happened a lot before and right after I got the implant and that is the loud noises in my head.  These remind me of old science fiction movies with sounds from the spaceships or the electrical current that the giant dinosaur is encountering as he tears down the high power wires in the old Japanese Sci-fi movies.  I will talk to the audiologist again about these when I got next week to see her, but in the past I just get blank stares when I bring these up.  I had not had them for several months and they seem (as before) to mostly come late in the evening.  I do not feel an more tired than on other nights, so I don't feel it has anything to do with being tired.

Last night I spent about an hour on line doing some research to see if I could find any answers, but did not find any help.  I will continue to look.  Thankfully it comes and goes, so it is not there all the time or I think it would drive me nuttier than I am. 

When I got home from supper there was still time to work in the yard a little.  The amaryllis plants are still blooming beautifully.  The six blooms all in one pot are amazing.  I is hard to get a good photo though since they all face different directions.  The other pot has started blooming now and when I was at my mom's house I saw that hers had a bud.  Hers always seem to be a couple of weeks behind mine.