The now-can-you-hEAR-me one.

If you don’t feel like reading all this, scroll down a few paragraphs. The summary and important parts of all this bologna (which you SHOULD want to read) is in bold.

Two weekends ago I went to this retreat I’ve wanted to go to for 3 years. It always falls on the same weekend, which happens to be Fall Visit Day (a special event put on by the Admissions and Enrollment Services office) every year, which I’ve been required to be at every year until this year. (I can already tell this is going to be a long story. I’m being breathy. Sorry.) Well, when I arrived at the retreat Friday night, I naturally forgot to throw my sleeping bag on a bed and got stuck sleeping on a mattress on the floor. 15 humans… 14 beds… Gabe on floor. Did I mention I also forgot my pillow? Oh yeah, I forgot my pillow.

It was actually comfortable as heck. Don’t feel sorry for me yet. (You’ll know when to.)

Here’s the climax: Saturday morning I woke up and I couldn’t hear out of my left ear. Dun dun dun dun. I say this loosely, of course. I could hear. I just couldn’t hear EVERYTHING. There were some noises that were muffled, some silent, and it felt like there was something stuck in there. So I do what any insane hypochondriac would do and assume a roach, or a small colony of ants, or a baby mouse crawled in my ear while I was asleep and was now nesting in my wax. (ß That’s kinda graphic. Sorr.)

Fast forward to Monday morning. I went to the health center on campus (BOOOOOO) and the doc told me there was nothing wrong with me. Basically, that I’m making shi up.

Really? REALLY? You think I formulated a lie of deafness just to come hang out with you and vomiting humans in the campus health center? No sir. That didn’t happen.

I kind of wish this were a little
more graphic for the effect. Weak. 

Now fast forward through over a week of me griping about not being able to hear and having to take naps and medicine because I can’t concentrate because of everything being muffled and the constant ringing and blah blah blah to today at 1:45, which was the first availability the real ear doc had. I even skipped food lab for this appointment. And Lord knows that’s a sacrifice. I transform into a chef on Wednesdays at 1:00 normally. But when I realized my doctor is young and smart and hot and spicy, I suddenly didn’t care so much about not learning to season and cut different types of meat.

After the doc ran lots of hearing tests and looked inside my ear, and I looked/ drooled at him, turns out:

I have permanent freaking hearing loss.

Here, read about it here. Enlighten yourself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ménière's_disease

The real question here is: Is that chin cellulite?
Lord help me if it is. Just chillin' getting ear drum 'roids. 

Basically, he said sometimes this just happens to people. GOOD, INNOCENT PEOPLE LIKE ME. I have moderate loss of hearing in my left ear and I’ll receive 3 treatments of ear drum steroid injections (lit’rally a long needle into my ear drum) over the next two weeks, the first of which happened today and it hurt like **insert profanity** and sounded like a finger snap by your ear underwater (I always snap at myself underwater?). But my ear drum is gonna be like so ripped on roids so it’s worth it, right? ;) #springbreak13yall. There is a constant ringing in my ear that kind of sounds like wind, which he said will never go away, but after a year or so, I’ll become used to it. (A year is a long-ass time to hear one single sound, jtlyk. I’m already going crazy after 2 weeks of it. Especially when I’m trying to go to sleep or study or meditate which I never do.) It’s apparently just my brain compensating for my lack of being able to hear low-pitched noises. What am I? 90 years old?

Anyway. See ya, hearing! Hola American Sign Language! (ß dramatic.)

I know there are worse things. I get that. And I am very blessed. But it doesn’t take away from the fact that I’m not going to miss not having to say “WHAT?” every time someone with a deep voice speaks to me on my left. So if you think about it, say a yittle prayer for me? God will be able to hear if you have a deep voice even if I can’t.

I'm practically a doctor. I made this chart that I copied from memory of my hearing test results for you to see. I think it's pretty freaking artsy, myself. 

So now I’m crying and laying in bed and sulking and eating string cheese and blahgging and charging my phone. If you want to cheer me up, I’d love a bowl of clear soup and some fried rice from Toyo (formerly Nagoya… sad), a California roll, and a brownie sundae without the ice cream (which I understand just makes it just a brownie) from Bop’s.

Happy HOLLARween, y’all!