Deaf

Deaf

Ok, from the ian pemberton bit from the yan chapter...

Was about 7 or 8

Hell just remembered nursery!

Anyroad, (btw have i mentioned yet that most of the time i write this i’m probably 5 or 10 x way over the legal driving limit in relation to drink-driving...yes, i’m a pisshead! – new chapter? Drugs/alcohol???? Lol)

Ha har de har! Last bit should be in the intro!

Ok, ian P....during one class said to me ‘hey, if you put a pencil into your ear & twist it about it feels real good’

‘does it?’ i asked, innocently, yet mega interested.

So what does he do? Inserts his pencil forcefully into my ear & twizzles it around! Unknowingly he’d inserted it so far into my ear that he’d ruptured my tympanic membrane with the pencil lead...which had ‘disappeared’ from his pencil! Oh, i wonder where that had gone?!?!

Yup I was fucked earwise! Which kinda compounded with my genetic (or so i’ve second guessed) ear problems...which means whenever i get a cold or similar i can now follow the symptoms...chest infection, beat that. Gone to throat infection (sore throat), beat that. Then poorly nose – bunged up – oh oh oh, what a surprise my ears are tingling.....oh my, i have an ear infection...an inner ear infection. You know what tht means right? Half way between your brain – your ears in the middle - & the outside world on the outside...a certain kind of pressure builds up! Thats the start! When i was a kid, it used to take a while to be made aware, nowadays its happening in a speeded up way! This pressure builds up & up! Until it becomes painful. In my minds eye i see the inner ear fluid becoming infected by disease, and the white blood cells try & fight the illness & there’s a battle like Helm’s Deep from lord of the rings, or whatevs. Therefore the pressure builds up by a squillion% the pain & intensity magnifies from the inside of my eardrum/tympanic membrane. Imagine it stretching cuz this battle is ongoing constantly, without rest & there’s more & more casualties & therefore there’s more & more cells thrown in to fight this disease yet there’s no peace cuz my white cells can’t kill it The disease is still alive & growing! The mass of pain intensifies to unbearable levels...this is where i start to moan & cry in low mode (as a child i believe i used to cry & scream ALL  night long – without any aid...paracetamol/ibruprofen doesn’t touch it. Nowadays whenever i get a chest infection kinda realise it’ll work its way up my tubes & stuff to do the throat thing & eventually reach me ears & a perforation of the tympanic membrane is inevitable! The only thing that helps fight the infection is antibiotics. But when i tell the doctors this, prior to my easrdrums bursting is – have i  tried analgeiacs  and how dare i suggest antibiotics whn its their decision abot them, lol. Oh your eardrums look red – in their tympaniscope...oh well, when they do burst at least the inscrutiating pain has then gone, but i’m incredibly deafened for days afterwards).

So as an 8 year old (?) walking to primary school on my own, -it seemed to be a different age then – i ha my Parker coat on, walking down the lane to school, hood up (further to increase my not haering-very-well) and i remember a car or 2 nearly running me over as i crossed a road. Basically cuz i was used to relying on my sense of hearing to haer the approaching vehicle! Wrong!!!! I shoulda used sight but i was still caught up with hearing..which was severely impaired! Luckily for me, my haering difficulty was only temporary.

Wonder if i could call up my medical records fgropm when i was 8? Why? Cuz around then i had grommets surgically implanted into my ears! I recall my grandma being there in the hospital soothing my fears & vaguely remember being told that they would fall out of my ears in my slep....i had many nights where i imagined some crystal glass miniature tubes being deposited onto my pillow! Well, i’m soon to be 48, been in various very loud punk bands & i’m still able to hear stuff – so i do thank my lucky stars! Though my dad was always goping om about being deaf too guerss that was a fear of huis, & currently he ain’t deaf, so maybe we are not genetically dispoded towards it. Yet he left an impression on me. What with my own experience of how potentiually life-threatening it could be. When i began as a student nurse – ion 1997, i heard of BSL lessons at Cauldon College in stoke or was it when i met mel? Hmmmmmm....