September 2nd

 Felt better yesterday. A bit more energy. A bit less tired. Much more reasonable.

I had a chat with audiology department at the hospital. They were very helpful. My ears they said, were in normal bounds, my right ear was worse than my left ear. However. They suspected the nerve, carrying signals from my ear to my brain was... well.. at the very least had had some difficult times.

Apparently my loss of hearing then sensitivity et al was textbook. Something happaned to your hearing she said. Your brain then panicked and turned the volume up to 11 trying in vain to hear something. Then it comes back and the volume is too loud. Hence it hurts.

She said it could well have been viral. Some damage to the nerves might have occurred. Could be covid. Could be another virus. She also said it could be the whole "Functional Neurological Disorder". Brain / nerves misfiring and generally being crazy. She said they also typically see such things in FND. She agreed with the Harley street doc that the face tingles and hearing loss are in the same place and its very possible damage was done thereabouts.

She had other advice and explanations for stuff. About how they find bodies that have gone through trauma - become very ill - can pick up tinnitus. It's the brains way of trying to dial in all the sensory information to pick up what's wrong - you're under attack, so your brain is turning up everything to try and help. And then it doesn't let go of it. Upshot is, you get "noise" that you dont want to hear. Tinnitus. She had a few theories as to what was going on. Maybe not Labyrinthitis at all, but a nerve issue.

In any case, she's referred me to get yet another MRI, this time focusing on my inner ear. She said it probably wouldn't pick anything up. But. They would be covering a 1 in 100,000 shot of a "benign lump" growing in my inner ear. She also set me up for an appointment with the ENT people. But confessed the waiting time would be more than a year.

Again I ticked a lot of boxes. The dizziness and hearing loss and tinnitus seems to sound some alarm bells for them. Neurology comes up a lot. She even predicted something that was wrong with me that I didn't know until I tried it. Oh yeah. That makes my tinnitus worse. Uh huh she said.

One of the more interesting questions / bits of advice she had was did I shy away from any sounds ? Yes ! Sirens. Alarms. Awful. They cause me pain. She reckoned my hearing was dialled up too high. And that I had to work on normalizing it a bit - get used to louder noises. "When doing the washing up, don't be too careful, let them clank so that your brain can dial in what volume it needs to be". Huh. Ok.

I had another vivid dream this morning. This time of a great cousin I haven't seen in decades. She wanted to play games with me, do whatever I was doing. Then at some point she became lost. Gone. We looked for her everywhere. But gone. Probably a parallel for Ares again I reckon.

There is part of me that feels like a very different me. That the person I was has burned away. Gone. And now there is this person here. Lesser. Dialled down. More numb. Quieter. Lost. It feels a bit like being born out of chaos into a world of quieter grey. It's not a great feeling. There is something of a peace about it. But not a happy peace. The peace of the dead. Perhaps its just that grief and depression evolving in me. It's not that though. Not just that. Whatever. I am aware my future has shifted. What I had before I no longer have. Things are different. And I can see that soon, they will change again. Dramatically. This is just a holding place for a short while before shit changes again. More bits of me will spiral off into the ether. Then what. This is way deeper than just Ares. This is about me as a whole. The progress of my life. In a very real way I have just stumbled from one thing onto the next. No plan. No real decisions made for myself. And to some extent those things are falling away leaving me with... nothing. I am nothing. There is nothing there. No drive. No ambition. No plan.

The thought crossed my mind of retiring. I can't afford it. But eh. What does it matter. Just. Stop.

Cheery cheery.

I'm pretty sure I am not even a properly functioning social adult at this point. I've become a horror. A wraith. Just stuck in a moment of pain. No longer human.

Then again, everyone seemed very happy with me over the weekend.

The whole, paradoxical subjective malarkey. People see in you... what they want to see. What is before their eyes. They do not see the you that you truly are, the iceberg below the water.