DESPERATE MEASURES!
Chris’s temporary deafness has some far-reaching effects…
After writing about an ear infection the other week, Sod’s Law dictated that I should get another one. It was a short-lived virus, but left me temporarily partially deaf in both ears. My doctor’s response was to render me totally deaf by ordering me to continually pour warm olive oil into my ears ahead of a syringing. So it was that I was consigned to a strange world where the only sound was the gentle lapping of olive oil waves, and the only sights an assortment of shouting faces.
The effects on the household of my sudden loss of hearing were dramatic. My wife Lorraine was the first to suffer because, as everybody knows, 90 percent of married life involves shouting “what?” at each other from other rooms. This marital tradition suddenly became impossible for Lorraine. She’d start a conversation from a distant room and receive only an eerie silence in response. Our marriage was suddenly a sham.
My daughter, being a teenager, was simply angered at my inability to hear anything at all.
“Would you get angry at a disabled person for not being able to walk?” I said, attempting to point out the unfairness of her attitude. It is of course impossible to reach
I was unaware of an ambulance, sirens blaring, right behind me
the moral high ground with a teenager and I ended up hanging my head as I lip-read the words “How dare you compare needing your ears syringed to somebody suffering a lifelong disability!”
Even the pets noticed the difference. Bodmin the cat found that shouting at the fridge no longer resulted in my appearing from nowhere to feed him chicken, and began to worry that his caterwaul had become obsolete. Jojo, perplexed that meowing full blast in my face now failed to wake me during the night, resorted to dive bombing me from the top of the wardrobe. Billie the rabbit discovered that slamming her Thumper-like back foot down hard on the hutch floor no longer stalled my approach and found the only way to stop me removing old hay was by biting me. My lack of hearing was becoming painful on all fronts, though Billie’s partner Ted noticed no difference – but then he doesn’t notice anything at all.
Out of all the people annoyed by my deafness though, nobody could have been more so than a couple of members of our local hospital staff.
While leaving the ear clinic after being told I’d need another week of warm olive oil before they’d be prepared to squirt water into my ears, I walked glumly down the hospital drive, lost in a sea of self-pity and totally unaware that there was an ambulance with a blaring siren right behind me. I led the ambulance all the way down that drive like a solemn undertaker leading a hearse.
I may not have heard the siren, but I certainly read the lips of the driver as he mounted a kerb to go round me. I could say I’ve been called worse things, but I really don’t think I have…