Pain and a whisper but mostly theoretical
Monday, September 1st, 2014 06:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jesse_the_kBeen a while, but I've been amusing myself, as well as intermittent low bits. Turned my back on Facebook, abandoned Twitter after the SDS conference, spending way too much time on MetaFilter, which is beginning to annoy me in useful ways, as well as doodling away a happy hour on Tumblr posting nothing. Reading actualfax books—paper as well as e—and fanfiction, of course. Here's a sprinkling of things I've stumbled across. Ask me anything (as they say) in the comments and I'll bloviate.
I've worked as a freelance calligrapher, typesetter, and graphic designer. This cartoon beautifully, and painfully, captures the continual teeter-totter between "being true to your own self" and "getting paid"
http://the-toast.net/2014/08/13/a-cartoon-about-book-design/
I've been having more difficulty understanding speech, especially at noisy places like cons (use your mics!) and restaurants. I've also had a strange two-tone mechanical humming in my ears for the past year or so. Okay, time for a hearing test. Mostly painless: put on these headphones, play noise in one ear and words in the other, parrot back the words. But then there was
when the audiologist began making earmolds for custom-fit earplugs. She began with, this might be uncomfortable, but tell me if it hurts as she stuffed a ball of foam all the way down my ear canal to millimeters away from my eardrum. It was excruciating: I could feel my trigeminal nerve trying to shrink away from her intrusion. Then she began at the foam and squirted silicone gel all the way back out where it would be visible in the shell of my ear. It got more excruciating: as the silicone set, it expanded.
I let her know that. I said, "It hurts! It hurts!" She said, "Try to think of something else" as she began inflicting the mold on my other ear. I attempted to bat her away but she said, You might as well have all the pain at once!
That was a lesson in how to alienate prospective patients. It makes me wonder what in hell medicos mean when they say, "this will be uncomfortable, but let me know if it hurts"? Is there some level of pain which reliably causes a reflex response in humans, and therefore docs can ignore unreliable information like "Oww! That hurts! Stop that! NO."? I know that enough pain makes me pass right out. Or say if I vomit, does that mean I've crossed the line from "uncomfortable" to "hurts"? How about if I curl up on cool bathroom tiles? Or maybe when I sandbag myself with microwave hotpacks? I'm just working back from the "pain behaviors" I've demonstrated when it's hurt too much for me at home.
Anyway, the exam result is: I have
She says wearing 29dB earplugs only makes the hyperacusis worse. (I wear them swimming and when I'm on the bus.) She's making "musician's earplugs" for me which dampen all sound equally across the noise spectrum which should "take the edge off" of the loudness of things.
I've worked as a freelance calligrapher, typesetter, and graphic designer. This cartoon beautifully, and painfully, captures the continual teeter-totter between "being true to your own self" and "getting paid"
http://the-toast.net/2014/08/13/a-cartoon-about-book-design/
I've been having more difficulty understanding speech, especially at noisy places like cons (use your mics!) and restaurants. I've also had a strange two-tone mechanical humming in my ears for the past year or so. Okay, time for a hearing test. Mostly painless: put on these headphones, play noise in one ear and words in the other, parrot back the words. But then there was
when the audiologist began making earmolds for custom-fit earplugs. She began with, this might be uncomfortable, but tell me if it hurts as she stuffed a ball of foam all the way down my ear canal to millimeters away from my eardrum. It was excruciating: I could feel my trigeminal nerve trying to shrink away from her intrusion. Then she began at the foam and squirted silicone gel all the way back out where it would be visible in the shell of my ear. It got more excruciating: as the silicone set, it expanded.
I let her know that. I said, "It hurts! It hurts!" She said, "Try to think of something else" as she began inflicting the mold on my other ear. I attempted to bat her away but she said, You might as well have all the pain at once!
That was a lesson in how to alienate prospective patients. It makes me wonder what in hell medicos mean when they say, "this will be uncomfortable, but let me know if it hurts"? Is there some level of pain which reliably causes a reflex response in humans, and therefore docs can ignore unreliable information like "Oww! That hurts! Stop that! NO."? I know that enough pain makes me pass right out. Or say if I vomit, does that mean I've crossed the line from "uncomfortable" to "hurts"? How about if I curl up on cool bathroom tiles? Or maybe when I sandbag myself with microwave hotpacks? I'm just working back from the "pain behaviors" I've demonstrated when it's hurt too much for me at home.
Anyway, the exam result is: I have
- excellent hearing in optimal conditions (cool)
- difficulty "hearing in noise" (yeah, that's why I was there)
- tinnitus (Checking just now at HearingLossHelp druglist (PDF), I'm taking three meds known to cause tinnitus in some people. Huh and
- Hyperacusis
She says wearing 29dB earplugs only makes the hyperacusis worse. (I wear them swimming and when I'm on the bus.) She's making "musician's earplugs" for me which dampen all sound equally across the noise spectrum which should "take the edge off" of the loudness of things.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-09-11 05:15 pm (UTC)