October 25,
2006
Restored
Hearing Means Listening for the Good News
Hearing is
just as important to me as sight. My right brain sends me pictures so
constantly that I have to shut them off to accomplish anything. When the
original Star Wars film was first broadcast on a premium TV
service I didn’t subscribe to, I listened to the free radio simulcast
and my imagination supplied all the visuals I could possibly want.
I cannot
bear the thought of not being able to soar to the strains of the
Hallelujah chorus from Handel’s Messiah, of never hearing the voice of
God in a child’s giggle, or of not being able to notice and laugh at a
mockingbird imitating a blue jay. How can we truly live without the
occasional melodic cascade of a waterfall or the soft tinkling of wind
chimes? Without the wild, mournful call of a loon across a lake, or the
woodpecker’s rat-a-tat-tat puncturing the misty forest morning? Without
hearing “I love you” from the ones we most love in return?
People who
cannot hear sounds do live very well and successfully, but I don’t think
I’m brave enough to join their ranks. I’m spoiled rotten. Without sound,
I would feel very isolated and bereft.
Thus I was
devastated to realize some time ago that I had lost most of the hearing
in my left ear.
I put off
doing something about it until earlier this year. Then my partner, who
had a very bad feeling about my half-deaf state, put her foot down and
made a deal with me. She would go back to the cardiologist to check up
on her heart if I would get my hearing checked. She kept her part of the
bargain, so I had to keep mine.
That’s when
I was diagnosed with an acoustic neuroma. This is medical-speak for a
non-cancerous tumor that grows out of Schwann cells, which are nerve
cells in the ear that specialize in helping the brain turn vibrations
into decipherable sounds. It’s not a common condition. Only about one in
every 100,000 or so people grows an acoustic neuroma large enough to
cause hearing loss, according to the Acoustic Neuroma Association.
This isn’t
exactly the type of unique personal growth that I have pursued for two
decades. Nonetheless, it is the kind I now face. An acoustic neuroma
enlarges slowly but continuously. If it is not removed via surgery or
radiation, it can, ultimately, be life-threatening.
Before I
knew the precise physical agent of my hearing loss, I wondered about the
more intangible causes. My worldview holds that physical disease
reflects emotional, spiritual and mental disease. Ill health originates
in the heart and spirit as well as the mind.
Lying in
bed one night, trying to meditate and full of self-pity, I wailed
silently, Why me? Why have I lost the hearing in one of my precious
ears? An answer immediately filled my head. You never expect to
hear the good news, so why do you need two ears?
Ouch! That
shoe more than fit; it pinched painfully.
Until very
recently, I always expected to hear only bad news, never anything
positive. I was the perpetual pessimist, convinced I was simply being a
realist.
Behind that
conviction, however, was my deeply held belief that I was not worthy of
good news, that I could expect nothing but bad from life.
I also know
from my personal growth experiences that it takes more than a mental
attitude adjustment to transform this type of deep belief. It takes a
fundamental alteration of the very soul essence that we are.
I have
undertaken that process of soul-deep personal change many times, and it
has helped me free myself of many of my limiting beliefs, including the
one about never being worthy of good news.
After all,
there’s just as much chance of the news being good as there is of it
being other than good. Why suffer from such a one-sided expectation? Why
not open both ears to all the news – the not-so-good and the downright
great?
So, head
surgery, here I come. My expectation now is that I will come through
surgery just fine, although the question of whether any hearing in my
left ear can be saved remains unknown until the doctors pop the top, so
to speak, and have a look at the actual tumor as opposed to the tumor’s
image on the MRI.
I’m also
collecting tumor humor. My punster-sister has already made cracks about
the operation being the Schwann song for this tumor and highly
nerve-wracking to boot.
If anyone
has something else to add to my tumor humor collection, please pass it
along. I’ll report the results after I recover from my date with the
saw-bones.
(Editor’s
note: Please e-mail your tumor jokes to Candace Talmadge at info@greenstoneofhealing.com.)
© 2006
North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.
Click here to talk to our writers and
editors about this column and others in our discussion forum.
To e-mail feedback about this column,
click here. If you enjoy this writer's
work, please contact your local newspapers editors and ask them to carry
it.
This
is Column #CT6.
Request permission to publish here.
|