Losing My Hearing and Night Vision Goggles!

Today I went through a battery of inner-ear tests. First, a set of Audiogram tests performed by a sweet lady doctor. One of them where I sat in a sound-proof booth with noise-cancelling headphones on and responded to beeps at various frequencies and volumes. Next, I needed to repeat the words a recorded male voice said. 

Please repeat each word you hear clearly.
"Pizza," the voice said. "Beer!," I returned. 
"Ham," the voice intoned. "Cheese!," I gleefully replied.
"Nag," the masculine voice spoke.  "Wife!" I shot back.

The doctor stopped the test there, and feigning laughter she said, “Mr. Jockomo, please repeat the work you hear, not what first word comes to mind.” I couldn’t help, but use the test as a word-association game--I was bored with a little bit-o-fear behind that. Since the mega-vertigo episodes in May, I have seen the inside of many a clinic and it sometimes feel like I will be a permanent residence on these things sooner than later.

I finished the test correctly and two others. The doctor told me I have high-frequency hearing loss in both ears and she wants to see me in a year, but does not believe this diagnosis is related to my vertigo. This was another one of those special "Hey guess what? You're getting old" treats. Just like the one I wrote about on DATE where I went in about vertigo and came out with skin cancer. So, I'm going deeef. Great, but what about my vertigo?

Silence of the Lambs

In the afternoon I had Electronystagmography (or ENG) testing done. I did the ENG to determine if I had a vestibular dysfunction. The ENG measures nystagmus (a type of involuntary eye movements) and other eye movements. There are also tests where warm, and later, cool, air is blown through my ear canal. 

Most of the testing is done with IR goggles on your head. Since, I cannot see how absolutely stupid I look I had to do a Google image search. Think the night vision goggles the serial killer in "Silence of the Lambs" used at the climax of the film with Jodie Foster. "It puts the lotion in the basket."

Anyway, that's over. I'll find out what all this testing is all about on September 2. From there, who knows. Oh yeah, I have skin cancer surgery later that week.