About 5 months after my illness, a choir friend of mine paid me a surprise visit. The two of us went out for a short walk and ended up sitting on a curb down the street under a streetlight, so I could read his lips.

We began talking about the loss of my hearing. My friend, like so many others, asked me how my hearing was, how the hearing aids were helping, and if I would ever get my hearing back. The doctors had told me by then that my hearing loss was probably permanent, although still fluctuating some.

I think my friend came with a hidden agenda. He seemed extraordinarily curious about the science of my hearing loss. He wanted to know just how much I could hear, especially as it related to hearing music. He decided to do a little test. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the pitch pipe he always carried with him. He was the one in the Men’s Quartet at our high school who always blew out the beginning notes to get them started.

“I’m going to play a note on the pitch pipe,” he told me. “Tell me if you can hear it.”

I was hesitant at first. I didn’t have a lot of faith I would be able to hear anything, but I eventually nodded. My friend took a deep breath and puffed out a long, solid note. “Tooooot.”

I tried hard to listen. I even closed my eyes. “I can hear something,” I said, “but I’m not sure what note I am hearing.”

I asked him to play the note again and he did. I nodded and told him I had definitely heard sound, thanks to the hearing aids, but that I still wasn’t sure what pitch I was hearing. “Can you sing it back to me?” he asked. “I’ll tell you if what you sing back matches the note I played.”

“I’m not sure I can,” I tried to explain. There were so many sounds going on in my head from the tinnitus. I wasn’t sure if I was hearing the pitch pipe or the ringing in my ears.

I was still self-conscious and worried that I would sound dreadful since I could no longer monitor my own voice. But my friend reassured me that he would not judge. He was actually quite fascinated by the whole process. I felt a little bit like a science experiment. Yet, I was eager to know the results myself. Trusting my friend not to laugh or reject me, I swallowed hard, closed my eyes and listened again, as he piped out a pure tone. “Tooooot.”

“I’m ‘hearing’ all these overtones!” I objected.

I came to understand later through research that what I was “hearing,” or rather, experiencing then, was another effect of the “recruitment” which accompanied my hearing loss. While the few remaining working hair cells in my ears tried to carry that one unit of sound which my friend played from his pitch pipe, those same hair cells were also being “recruited” into adjacent critical bands where the hair cells were “fried” and could no longer carry sound. So, instead of hearing just one frequency for that unit of sound, my brain was now receiving several signals at the same time — each at a different frequency!

Trying to encourage me, my friend asked me to just try to sing back what I thought I was hearing. It took great courage, as I was still full of self-doubt. Finally, I drew a breath and let out a resonant warble. I didn’t want to look at my friend’s face, but I had to. I needed to know how I sounded.

My friend looked confused at first, and shook his head. Then he gently said, “Try again.”

I watched him change the note on the pitch pipe and blow out another long “Tooooot.” Again I heard many overtones and tried to decide which one was the most dominant. I sang back what I thought I heard, but my friend still looked confused.

I was a bit surprised when he explained that I wasn’t singing back just one note. My voice was apparently jumping around a bit as I sang. I was unaware of this, unable to monitor my own voice. It was terribly frustrating and embarrassing. I had always had such a fine tuned ear for pitch and intonation. I was never sharp or flat. The only warble I ever had when I sang was when I purposely chose to use a staccato or vibrato voice to add emphasis or emotion when the music sheet called for it. It was a musical technique, not a mistake. But I wasn’t using those techniques then.

My friend dutifully explained my pitch was not steady. It was fluctuating as I sang. I wasn’t consistently staying on one note like I thought I was.

We continued this exercise a little longer while my friend tried to measure if there were any relationships between what he played on the pitch pipe and what I sang back to him. Was I consistently singing an octave above a “G”, or perhaps, 4 notes below when he blew out a “C” note? Though I appreciated that my friend tried in earnest to find some key that would help me stay connected to music, I was glad when he finally surrendered. He could not find any correlations.

He also commented that my singing voice sounded lower than usual, and a bit gruff, as if I had a cold or a sore throat. Unfortunately, my vocal chords had been traumatized from the tubes that had been frequently inserted and removed in my throat during my lengthy hospital ordeal. I would still croak hoarsely for some time.

My Audiologist had also told me that my voice might change as a result of my hearing loss. He said some people with hearing loss have rougher voices, which may sound increasingly monotone over time. I could hardly imagine my animated and theatrical voice becoming monotonous.

My friend and I sat together in silence for a while, trying to make sense out of what had transpired. Our heads were bowed low as we leaned against one another, each trying to subdue the sadness and grief between us. We both understood that our connection through music was gone. My friend and I would no longer make beautiful music together. Finally, he took my hand and silently walked me home. After a hug and a kiss, we parted with unfulfilled promises to keep in touch.

I went inside the house, closed the door of my bedroom and sat numbly on the floor with my back against my water bed. Tears soon followed, and I wrapped myself in my own arms as I grieved. That night, I realized my connection to my special friend, and most likely to the rest of my choir and band friends, would probably come to an end.

The loss of my hearing, and the loss of music were tragic and would create grand canyons between us. But, the undeniable realization of the loss of my identity as it revolved around music was the most profound loss that night. It was a moment of truth. The talented vocalist and musician I had been, was gone. I could no longer be that person.

I felt so lost.

Posted by LaRonda on Saturday, January 20th, 2007 at 7:25 pm.