I Hear Birds. All the Time.

Hearing loss is one of the myriad ways I’m beginning to align with my mother.

For years, my mother had life-disrupting tinnitus, until she became completely deaf in one ear and critically impaired in the other. (Or maybe she became deaf and thus the tinnitus.) She avoided places where there was noise, it made her head roar. Noise was everywhere. She wore noise canceling headphones—the kind airport employees wear on the tarmac—in the shower, out in public, in the kitchen. She stopped listening to music. I always wondered if the headphones were counterproductive, trapping the sound in her head, like putting a conch shell to your ear. I never asked, I just trusted she was doing what helped mitigate it for her. I lived far away then, and was less tempted to try to “fix her.”

By the time I came to live with her, deaf in her right ear and without the hearing aid in her left ear, she heard nearly nothing, neither external nor internal. At least she no longer talked about the internal if she did, and she would have.

I marked the last year of my sixties with my own set of hearing aids. I had been asking certain people to repeat what they said to me often enough that it annoyed them. I put it off for a long time. I’m not sure why, really; mostly inertia. The expense. Then Covid. There is stigma attached to hearing aids, though it didn’t bother me what other people thought. I’ve worn glasses since my early twenties, why are hearing aids different? Except they are. People start losing vision at any age, but hearing loss seems mostly relegated to the aging. Maybe I didn’t want to acknowledge to myself that I was moving from middle age to late age.

I finally took the plunge and went for a test. My doctor referred me to the same Ear, Nose, Throat practice thirty miles from home that I had taken my mother to so many times; I felt myself starting down her path. “Do you hear ringing or roaring?” both the audiologist and the doctor asked. “Not really,” I said. “Maybe a little when it’s really quiet,”—giving credence to my doubt that my mother’s response to tinnitus was to do everything in her power to cancel all noise.

The good news is, the hearing loss is mild, and—unlike my mother’s—equal between ears, consistent with normal aging. As I suspected, I have lost the upper pitches, which is pretty much how typical hearing loss happens. The bad news is, I still can’t hear the people I couldn’t hear before. I’m beginning to have more sympathy for my mother. Don’t mumble, don’t talk to me with your back turned, it’s not volume so much as enunciation, adjust to what you know I need. Care.

The other bad news is, I hate them. I can’t tuck my hair behind my ears, the space is already occupied. The helix of my ears are working hard for me. (I had to look that part of the ear up.) I can’t figure out which fashion accessory to attach first: glasses, aids, or mask. I have to be careful when I remove my mask that the aid doesn’t fall out. In yoga, the first time I wore them, my mask kept falling off. I spent more time putting it back over my ear, and putting the hearing aid back, than I did in downward facing dog. Which was no great loss.

And the battery dies at inopportune times. The audiologist failed to mention that the cool app on my phone, where I can change the volume and check the battery life, is not reliable for replaceable battery aids, only for the rechargeable ones. And the little doodad that picks up the sound fills with wax, and I can’t hear until I replace it, regardless of battery life. It fills with wax because I hardly ever go out, and I don’t wear them at home. My ears continue to recognize them as foreign objects and protect themselves with wax. As soon as I’m home on the rare outing, I take them out—like taking off a certain female undergarment. It’s all super annoying.

But back to the tinnitus. I’ve started hearing birds twittering. Birds, I thought, how nice! And then I realized I was hearing birds all, the, time. Inside the house, with the windows closed. Uh oh, I thought, I bet it’s tinnitus. I checked WebMD, my favorite go-to for health questions. Symptoms include hearing ringing, buzzing, roaring, hissing, or whistling. Nothing about twittering. I guess one could do worse than hear birds. It’s starting to get really irritating though, mostly because how do I know when it really is birds?

I read of something that might help temporarily diminish the noise: Place the palms of your hands over your ears with fingers resting gently on the back of your head. Your middle fingers should point toward one another just above the base of your skull. Place your index fingers on top of your middle fingers and snap them (the index fingers) onto the skull making a loud, drumming noise. Repeat 40-50 times. Repeat several times a day for as long as necessary to reduce tinnitus.

A test drive of the technique might have helped. Or maybe it was just that the headache it gave me was distracting.

_________________

I’ve had the darn things for almost a year now. I still hate them. I’m not ready to stop wearing my mask (and perhaps I should have gotten around the head ones, rather than ear loops), but when I am, maybe that will help. There’s still the hair behind the ears thing though. Someday I will cut it short; the aids are here to stay. Meanwhile, hears [sic] to the birds. Or is it spring peepers I hear now?

 

Homemade Electrolyte Drink

The Story

In an effort to avoid taking my mother to the ER when she was clearly not feeling well, but her symptoms didn’t seem to match those of her previous bowel blockages, I took her to an urgent care instead. Diagnosis: dehydration. Cure: Gatorade. My mother always had a cup of hot water by her side, fooling both of us into thinking she was getting plenty of fluids; but she only sipped it. She began drinking quantities of Gatorade, then complained of stomach pain. A Google search confirmed that store-bought electrolytes drinks can indeed cause stomach upset, especially for sensitive stomachs. It is full of sugar and artificial dyes and sweeteners. So I started making it myself.

The Recipe

1/2 cup orange juice
1/4 cup lemon juice
2 cups of water
3 tablespoons sugar
1/8 teaspoon sea salt
1 pinch baking soda

Combine all ingredients in a blender container and blend well. Or You just combine ingredients into a jar with a lid and shake until blended. Lasts three days in the refrigerator.

And a bonus for you: Limoncello Vodka Collins

3/4 cup vodka
1/2 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
1/8 cup limoncello (or more)
3/4 cup cold club soda
Ice cubes
Stir all of the above together.
Serves two generously.

It’s the Moments

We do not remember days, we remember moments (Cesare Pavese, Italian writer).

My mother was passionate about her rice bags. Each evening—and afternoon when she began napping in her bed—regardless of the season, she’d microwave-heat one for her feet in spite of wearing socks, one for her knees, and one for her right arm on the window side of the bed. At eighty pounds, she was always cold. At least that’s the reason she gave, or that I assumed.

A few years ago, my daughter-in-law made fancy rice bags for Christmas gifts. The past two winters—Covid winters—I’ve become attached to mine. Yes, the foot of the bed is cold (and I do not wear socks), but it’s warm after about a minute and I move the bag up to hug in my arms. It’s not the cold, it’s the comfort. It’s like my tight-fitting fingerless gloves, the weight of the yoga blanket across my mid-section during savasana, the electric fireplace near my desk in the pre-dawn morning, the heated seat in my car, my hand knit throw across my legs on the sofa in the evening, my cat Lena snuggled close to my legs at night. It’s not about cold. It’s comforting. I don’t think my mother would have articulated that’s what the rice bags were for her, but now I wonder.

How she must have missed my father all those years. Never a pet person, she had nothing after he was gone. I suppose she had gotten used it—alone is not lonely, living with someone who is distant is. And I expect she was more lonely after I arrived on the scene. I find myself wishing I could have laid down beside her in bed, rather than impatiently waiting to get her settled in bed so I could retire to my quarters in the downstairs suite for the evening. I wish I could have provided the intimacy of my presence in a way I had not since I was a child. And now I’m wondering about rice bag comfort.

Notice I say I wish I “could” have, not I wish I “would” have. Subtle difference, but I am not so far removed from the reality of the years with her that I have forgotten what I was and was not capable of. Even had I thought to climb into bed her—had she even wanted me to—I could not have. If I could have, I would have, but we were not emotionally close enough. I did not have enough love. There, I said it.

This is why my memoir does not include the perspective of the look back. It would not be an accurate depiction of the days in the trenches, it would be too easy to change the story. My mother changed the story of the years she cared for her mother . . . but that’s another story. We do the best we can—and even with all the knowing that someday we will look back and grieve, it’s impossible to apply the future to the present. When we are so tired it’s impossible to really understand the surety, even, that some day this parent or this partner will be gone forever.

What we can do, though, is notice the moments: right now I am holding her hand, right now she is saying she loves me, right now I am describing the sunrise to her, right now she is telling me a story of my infancy. Right now there is a moment to cling to. Right now I am her rice bag. When I’m bashing myself for all I did not/could not do, the words I wrote then remind me: there were many moments; I was not a terrible daughter.

Waking up in a Foreign Land without a Map

Reader post by B.R.
Posted: March 12, 2022

I’m not going to sugarcoat any of this. I’m wide awake at 1:30 am after a dinner of Good n Plenty and turkey casserole several hours ago. My hair is matted with dry shampoo and my worry gene just shifted into overdrive.

On Valentine’s Day, I took my Mom to the hospital for a TAVR procedure. A new heart valve with an overnight stay as a precaution. They came out after surgery and said all went well. Relief. Until it wasn’t. An hour and a half later they came out again and said there had been a complication. What? They offered to let me go back to see her . . .

I passed out that day on the floor of a Tacoma hospital’s surgical recovery room. It’s not every day you see your mother being rolled out the door toward ICU after suffering a complication from heart surgery. I was not prepared for what I saw. My own heart raced, I got lightheaded, and down I went. It was my initiation.

Welcome to caregiving.

Since that evening, my Mom has spent 12 days in the ICU/PCU and I was airlifted (figuratively) from the recovery room floor and dropped without supplies into a foreign land. I don’t know the language, I haven’t the right tools, and there is no map. I’ve been blindly wandering along the side of a cliff ever since.

The first hospitalization was three nights. She was discharged home from ICU and it was too soon. Covid made the concern over staying in ICU equal to the concern of coming home.

You don’t know what you don’t know. This isn’t caregiving, it’s firefighting. Every day there are dozens of fires to be put out. Here is my list today after her second homecoming:

Did I brush my teeth?
Take my pills?
Has she had breakfast?
Did I use the gait belt?
Is her BP taken?
Should I worry?
Temperature? Normal?
What drugs get taken in the morning?
What are they?
What are they for?
Should she still take them?
Why the hell is she taking them to begin with?
Have I remembered to measure fluids?
Why are they restricted?
Is she dehydrated?
Should she be this tired?
Is there confusion?
Are there appointments today?
Should I be calling the PT?
Is today the day the nurse comes?
Was I supposed to call OT?
Is the shower safe?
Is there mail?
Is someone looking at bills?
Are the dishes done?
Did I start the laundry?
Do I have enough socks?
Does my dog miss me?
Is there any food to eat?
Do we need shopping help?
Is the diet heart-healthy?
Have we exercised?
Is the sun out?
Have the birds started nesting?
Did the hummingbird feeder freeze?
Is the furnace working?
Is she warm enough?
Did the shows get taped?
Have I forgotten anything?

How does it all get done?
Will it always be like this?

Are there tricks?
Magic?

Fires.
In a foreign land.

Send hoses and help.