Tag: Hearing

Meditation observations: Reactivity

Today’s meditation session was on observing, noting and not-reacting to distractions.

There were three kinds of stimuli causing distractions – external sounds, body sensations and thoughts.

Chewie made some noise a few times while I was mediating. These sounds were the easiest distraction to recover from.

I felt a bit of a tinge in the lower back, and some funny sensations in fingers. These too were relatively easy and quick to recover from.

There were thoughts. Lots of thoughts, mostly about people and things that I would rather not think about. These were the hardest to recover from. And a few of them recurred during the session.

There was progress made though. By the end of the session, I was able to have longer sustained periods of focus without distractions. I noticed this (does noticing this and feeling happy about it count as a distraction?). And, on this very rare occasion, I wanted the session to go on for longer than it did :) Continue reading Meditation observations: Reactivity

A flat(tening) week…

Hearing therapy session got cancelled – Jen called in sick :(
I really needed this session – we’d made good progress in the previous session, and I was still reeling from Sunday’s mess.

Weekly mean weights

Weight has been trending up dramatically, after three weeks of heading down. Sunday’s gorging at the party, Monday’s cake feast, and yesterday’s gallons of red wine – all contributed. Culprit was clearly a weak will.

chart

Clutter free is stagnating – growth burst is over, and user numbers have been up and down since the US Thanksgiving.

Not enough users are signing up for premium support subscribtions. If the trend continues, I’ll have to cull time allotment to, if not kill entirely, the extensions. 40,000 users aren’t worth anything if even 1% of them don’t think these are worth paying.

Not a good week, so far.

The upside: week’s not over.

— Ever the optimist :)

Hard of hearing…

That’s me now.

I’ve been noticing having trouble hearing in certain situations for a few months now. I just wasn’t sure if it was in my head, or was it real. An incident a couple of months ago – R clearly heard someone while I could barely make out that they were talking – prompted me to get the hearing officially checked.

Today was the day. I had a hearing test done at the hospital, followed by an appointment with a consultant to discuss the results. It’s official – I have moderate to severe hearing loss, on higher frequencies, in both my ears. The hearing on lower frequencies is completely normal. I may also have mild tinnitus.

All in all, bad news all around.

The equal hearing loss in both ears indicates that it could not be because of a growth or deformity in one ear, and is likely genealogical. Which also means there is no cure. The hearing will continue to worsen, hopefully very slowly. She’s prescribed hearing aids for me (at 38!). I also need to go for an MRI, just so they can rule out any other possible reasons.

I don’t want hearing aids1. And I don’t want hearing loss. I went in hoping they’ll say that I have grossly dirty ears and need to clean them regularly. Not that I’m losing hearing early and need to wear hearing aids, and could even go clinically deaf if the hearing loss speeds up.

I’m scared. I’m unhappy. And the only person who makes me happy at these times2 is himself under anaesthesia, getting a growth on his head surgically removed :(

I’m very, very unhappy.

  1. NHS only provides big, behind the ear hearing aids. They do provide them free though. Or I could go private and get those tiny, barely visible in-ear ones. My preference: None >>>>>>>>>>>>> In-ear ones >>>> NHS ones. Can I have none please? :( ↩
  2. He’s also probably half the cause of my hearing loss – with his loud, high-pitch whining, and super-loud barking at the cat across the street. ↩