Stephen Mejias

My ears had been bothering me. First my right, then the left. A low-level high-pitched ringing, followed by a congested feeling and a popping like what you get when flying or taking an elevator way up to the 29th floor. Then, one morning in Las Vegas while attending the Consumer Electronics Show, my left ear went whooooooooosh. And my hearing was momentarily dulled&#151not completely gone, just dulled. Outside sounds were farther away, my own voice sounded distant and muffled. It freaked me out.

I started talking to myself.

Hello? Hello!

What the heck was going on? Had I been listening too hard? Too many late night listening sessions? Whatever it was, it would have to be fixed.

After a few moments, the volume level seemed to have been turned back up to normal. I could hear again, but the clogged-up sensation remained. Later that day, I felt weak and feverish. Perhaps it was all just part of my usual CES sickness&#151every year, at some point during the show, I get sick. A day later, I felt much better, but my ears continued to bother me. This persisted for some time after the Consumer Electronics Show. Some days were worse than others. At times there was even some slight pain&#151a sharp pressure&#151in my left ear. Finally, I went to the doctor.

The doctor seemed concerned. He said my lungs were tight, my sinuses were a mess, and my ears looked awful. I left his office with five prescriptions and a shot in the thigh. "This'll make you feel better right away," the doctor had said. But it didn't, really.

A week later, all of my medicine was gone, and my ears were feeling worse. I went to a different doctor.

He said my left ear was "95% clogged with wax," and the right ear "wasn't much better." He referred me to a specialist for a cleaning. I was excited.

I'm going to have superhuman hearing! I thought to myself.

The specialist was delightful and strange&#151a short, thin, balding man with thick eyeglasses and a childlike, nervous laugh. He looked like a puppet, he looked like he was drowning in his large white lab coat. When I told him I worked for Stereophile, he replied: "Oh! Heh, well, your hearing is very important to you then, isn't it, heh?"

"Yes," I smiled. "This is fun."

"Fun?! Oh, heh."

The examination room was filled with toys&#151headphones and flashlights and cables and large, metal boxes with countless knobs and switches&#151not unlike John Atkinson's test lab. The doctor poked around in my ears with a long, thin, cotton-tipped rod. This, I did not like. It wasn't painful, exactly, but it didn't feel good, either.

"It's more of a web of wax," he said.

"A web?"

"Yes, not a clump."

"Oh."

He poked around some more. I was hoping that he'd pull out something large and beautiful&#151like a rabbit or Scarlett Johansson or a wad of cash&#151but no such luck.

"Now, I'm going to play some music for you," he said.

Again, I was excited. I was hoping for salsa but he took a tuning fork and tapped it against the side of his desk and held it close to my right ear.

"Do you hear this in your right ear or your left?" he asked me.

"The right."

He tapped the tuning fork again and placed it close to my left ear.

"Left ear or right?"

"Left."

He tapped the tuning fork again and placed it against my forehead.

"Do you hear this in your left ear, right ear, or in the center?"

"Center."

"Very good. You're giving me all the right answers."

It was a pretty easy test, I thought.

The doctor then placed headphones over my ears and asked me to listen to a sequence of test signals, evenly-spaced beeps and hums. Each subsequent set of signals was lower in level than the preceding set. He played a signal and I reported whether it was audible.

"Yes."

"Now?"

"Yes."

"Now?"

"Yes."

"Now?"

"Yes."

"Now?"

"Yup."

I felt like I could hear these tiny beeps and hums forever. The thing is that they're played in a constant rhythm&#151beep...beep...beep...beep...beep&#151and once I got a hold of that rhythm, I could hold on to it for days, it seemed. After a certain point, I wasn't sure if I was really hearing the beep, or just imagining it where I knew it was supposed to be. I started saying "No," just to get the test over with.

"Okay," said the doctor. "Everything seems to be fine."

"That's it?"

"Yes. Just meet the nurse at the front desk, and you're all done."

I wanted to ask him if he could give my ears a pressure cleaning or an oil change or something, but I didn't.

"Okay," I said. "Thank you."