The Sound of Silence (Or Lack Thereof...)

Yikes, it's been a month without a post, so here's a long one. I'll blame it on summer visitors. Before i get started i'd like readers to know that things this year are much better than last summer as described below.

Last spring i was feeling motivated and had planned several multi-day off trail hikes. I got an early start on the training to make sure i was in good condition when the right days came along. In late May, right after Memorial Day, i began to hear an extremely high pitched ringing in both my ears. I noticed it on a walk with the dog and Maree up in the mountains. The ringing wasn't that loud, but the pitch was annoying, and it was worse in my left ear. I didn't think much about it but two weeks later it was still going on, and it was often made worse by driving on the highway. I didn't want to go to the doctor though, because i had just blown a ton of  money on doctors and gotten nothing out of it for an entirely different condition that in the end i fixed myself. I was also very busy trying to get things ready for a slew of visitors in June. Plus, i had ringing before three years ago at the same time of year and it eventually went away.

Another week went by and one night i woke up at 2:00 am to the worst sound i've ever heard. It was deafening. It was like someone was trying to use a table saw to slice through metal sheets inside my skull and it had an overlying electrical component to it. I wanted to shove in icepick in my head. I don't know why, but for some reason i didn't go to the emergency room. I realized later that sound was my brain trying to make sense of the cilia suddenly dying in my inner ear.  I lost  enough hearing that night that i can no longer hear some very normal sounds in my left ear. I can barely hear cymbals in a drum set. This was  the beginning of my experience with tinnitus.

 Empire State Building from a doctors office.

Near another medical facility.

Of course, i did go to the doctor after that terrible night, but it was too late. The sounds i heard all the time now were exacerbated by very normal every day sounds like turning sheets of paper, the soft crinkle of plastic grocery bags, the sound of tires on the road (especially the sound of wet streets under the tires), water running through small pipes in a bathroom sink, compressed audio on TV, nylon brushing on nylon, even leaves rustling in the wind.

All those noises would make the tinnitus louder, and the tinnitus was already always louder than whatever else was going on. It would never stop. It began driving me insane. I couldn't sleep and i had trouble paying attention to conversations. I began to feel a great anxiety all the time, to the point that i couldn't eat any more. In about two weeks i lost 16 pounds and i became so fatigued from lack of sleep i felt like i might collapse at work sometimes. So it was no surprise that i fell into depression.

After you have had your fill of typical NYC tourist sights you will become interested in a more thoughtful exploration of the city. Trinity Church has several Churches and graveyards around Manhattan. They are very old for America (NYC has been inhabited for 400 years!) This one was in Harlem and was a nice place to wander around.

Here's a pretty non-touristy tourist destination. The High Bridge opened in 1848 as an aqueduct and pedestrian bridge connecting Harlem and the Bronx. Although closed for the last FORTY years, it remains the oldest surviving bridge in the city.
 

Local doctors surmised that the hearing loss was most likely caused by my hay fever allergies, which were pretty bad that year. My eustachian tubes connecting my ears to my throat had swollen shut at some point, preventing my ears from regulating the pressure behind my ear drum. It didn't feel any different to me but as i kept changing altitude (going up the mountains several times a week for training) the pressure increased in my ears until that fateful night when some of my cilia died. I don't know what put it over the edge, maybe a pressure system moved through town that night.

If you want to get away from crowds, this bridge is for YOU. I was up here for 20 minutes and didn't see a soul. Getting here requires a bit of walking through a largely residential area of Harlem.  That is underwear hanging on the barbwire. Gotta love NYC.

They REALLY don't want you going on the bridge, unless you have a short ladder. I did not have a short ladder.

Peering through a small hole in the big black doors you can see what looks like a pleasant walk across a cobbled brick path with wonderfully low railing. Man, i really miss the days of low railing. The picture below is looking back at a strange old watertower build along with the bridge. You can see a pretty cool shot of the interior of the tower on the wiki page here.

I had to start taking sleeping medication and anti-anxiety medication to rest and eat. I was very depressed, and at some point this allergy medicine called Singulair had a reaction with Lunesta sleeping pills and made me have terrible suicidal thoughts. I couldnt' believe it when i read the label on the allergy medication and it said "may cause suicidal thoughts". It's just allergy medication! I knew something was up because i have NEVER EVER thought about killing myself. I've never even been depressed without good reason (like the death of a loved one). It had gotten to the point that i began to think about where i should do it, and how.

I was absolutely hopeless. I couldn't imagine living in my condition for more than a little while. So at that point i decided to go see a psychiatrist. I had never done that before, but i figured i had nothing to lose. The bad thoughts stopped soon after changing the ridiculous allergy medication, and i didn't need the sleeping pills after i received some anti-anxiety medication (psychiatrists make a ton of money in case you're looking for a new career).

After not too long the psychiatrist wanted me to commit to a year long anti-depression medication treatment, but i knew (and endlessly point out to every doctor i saw) that if i could just get the ringing to improve i wouldn't need to do that.
  

Near high bridge i wandered into the woods and found a small pocket of.... NATURE!

Please ignore the fork in the lower right of the image, and the spray paint on the upper left of the metamorphic rock cliff. And please imagine snowy and/or tropical mountains instead of the low income housing of the Bronx in the background... and the industrial train yard.... and i promise that is a pool of WATER, nothing else.

On the other side of Harlem (by the way, Harlem is not where i was staying but i spent a lot time walking around there because i'd never been) the subway briefly comes out above ground and has one elevated station stop.

 There's a good place to the left of here called Dinosaur Bar-B-Que.

There are tons of places in NYC had never seen but  recognized immediately from playing Grand Theft Auto, like this bridge.

In October, my friend Sandor, offered to fly me to NY, where he lives, to see some really good doctors about my ear problems. I was there for 3 weeks, and after a ton of tests and massive loss of blood, the several doctors i saw determined that the best option for me, since the ringing was not caused by anything like a brain tumor (yes i even had a brain scan), was a therapy called cochlear retraining. This is a sound therapy where they map out the sounds you are hearing in your head. They then embed these sounds into a kind of white noise that they play in the background of some specially designed music. Listening to this music through headphones for 2-4 hours a day teaches your brain, over a period of 9 months to 2 years, to filter out the tinnitus, or greatly reduce it.

I had heard about the treatment before i went to New York but it is expensive and i wanted to be sure it a symptom of some other problem. The only problem is that they can only do it for one frequency, and i am hearing 3 frequencies of sounds. So i had to pick the most bothersome noise for treatment. Since it takes a long time several checkups are required to measure the progress. Although they offered the treatment there in New York City, i opted to have it closer to home, at a well known facility in Portland, Oregon called the Oregon Tinnitus and Hyperacussis Treatment Clinic. So off to Portland i went.....

I think my favorite area on the island was down around Wall Street, oddly enough. There the city is the oldest, and the streets are much narrower, curved, and have a more organic feel rather than a grid like the uptown areas.

 A neat closed off road where you can eat outside. Almost looks like Europe!

Manhattan has reclaimed acres of land from the water west of the World Trade Center site, much of it made with all the dirt they had to dig out to make the foundations for the towers. Some of it is used for an upscale downtown neighborhood.

 Inside the glass dome from the previous image is this kinda strange computer designed interior. But it's also a nice large space.

 Visitors gaze at the construction of the new tower site.

 This is what the construction of the new tower looked like at the end of October 2010.

I am very grateful to my friends who offered me a place to stay for so long while i tried to set up a long series of appointments with popular doctors who were always on vacation or moving into better places. And i cannot stress enough that if you hear ringing in your ears that is bothering you, you need to get to a doctor sooner rather than later or the ringing could get MUCH louder. Tinnitus and/or hearing loss will change your life forever.

Although i did lots and lots of walking i didn't take many pictures during my time in NYC. I was still wearing a sling the entire time i was there, so carrying around a camera was cumbersome, and any serious shots were out of the question. By the time i was about to leave my arm was feeling good enough that i thought i might try taking a tripod with me to do an HDR at an interesting place i found in Harlem, but the light was never right for it in those last days. I think at least some of these shots offer a bit of information about other parts of New York aside from what you typically see in vacation photos.