I can hear again...kinda.

I lost my hearing last week and just now I'm getting it back. I still hear the sound of white noise in one ear but for the most part my audio is back online. I think I got an infection from an experiment I did. I usually don't eat junk food but before "the unpleasantness" I had eaten an entire box of Lucky Charms cereal. I was timing my G.I. tract and thought this old comfort junk from my childhood would be a great measuring dye when it came out the other end. Is it possible to get an infection from unfamiliar food? It was a real challenge doing a weeks worth of shows, navigating traffic on the tall bike and playing music when the volume on my ears was set at about 3 or less. It was like having my ears covered in gauze and then also wearing a crash helmet. I had to read her lips to know what part of the song we would be doing and you can bet my kids and woman had a blast moving their lips at me like they were saying something just to mess with my head. Real funny! It wasn't all bad. When it started I had no hearing and as coincidence would have it, my partner was just getting her monthly visit from "Aunt Flow". She gets grouchy, chatty and irritable during those times but this round I just nodded,rubbed her back a lot, told her i love her and smiled (or business as usual). It wasn't just a buffer for my menstrual maiden, I became real introspective for a bit there. I was able to identify the song that has been looping in my head for 20 years(interstellar overdrive)and i wrote good stuff and had good ideas that only appear in a vacuum of other sensory input. We did a show where the only kid there was a little girl with no hearing at all. She has a device in her ear that connects to her brain. That day she had a better idea of how the show went then I did. How surreal! There was another part of this experience that I will never forget. We were in bed, I was almost asleep and didn't hear 1. three huge flies buzzing overhead. 2. Olive getting more and more annoyed by them dive bombing her. I was suddenly jostled awake by my woman (the hottest girl I know) leaping up, buck naked, angrily flinging herself at the ceiling bull frog style. With a piece of towel in her hand like a giant bingo marker; three times she jumped up and every time she took out a fly. In my head it went from serine drifting into slumber to attack mode with three confirmed kills in three surgical strikes. I was so impressed! She then went back into quiet mode like nothing happened. The only thing I heard the whole time was her swearing like a sailor then her coo-ing lovingly and kissing me goodnight. The next day it got painful. The silence turned to the sound of aircraft afterburners. It felt like i was wearing heavy ear-rings in my brain. One night I got so introverted that I lost track of reality entirely. As happy activities of the clown cave went on, I sat in a chair in the dark. I saw myself pinned on the side of a mountain under a sickly orange sky held down by powerful heat mirages that gave me motion sickness. I tried to play it off like I'm fine but everyone knew I was in a bad way. I wanted to feel better but I didn't under any circumstances want my malady to become part of a pharmaceutical companies windfall. I also wasn't hip to helping the ear candle hoax or any other fake remedy. Of course the first thing I did was look online. It said that a mix of alcohol and vinegar is great for breaking down wax. We tried it and guess what? All the severe burning you would imagine and none of the relief. Olive thinks we should have used Balsamic vinegar instead of the white kind. Then we went to Walgreens. I looked but most of the remedies had the red flag word "homeopathic" I'm not cool with that. I got what I thought was a more science based product but when I got home discovered it had the "H" word cleverly hidden in a tiny red stripe. Internet tells me that the ingredients within actually do chemically break down hardened ear grease so the H word is a moot point in this case. Peroxide, heat and massage helped a lot. I also broke down and took some acetaminophen. I hate pills. It still sounds like faint white noise but it's getting a lot better. I know that sugar makes it worse so I'm keeping away from humming bird foods. I'm very glad that we didn't seek antibiotics. I think everyone should take a vacation from the roar of civilization from time to time.