Today is Day 17 of #HAWMC (WEGO’s Health Activist Writers Monthly Challenge).  The prompt today is:

Throwback Thursday!
Grab a post from your archives and repost it!
Add a few sentences at the beginning to frame it.
Why you chose it. Why you liked it. And why it should be shared again.

The post I want to share with you again came from another Health Activist Writers Challenge on April 11, 2012.  The prompt was “Theme Song”, I was to imagine my health focus or blog is getting its own theme song.  At the writing of this post I was losing my hearing, but I hadn’t lost it completely yet.  I did not have a cochlear implant yet.

I wanted to repost this because often people have no idea what it means to have tinnitus.  Please note that my tinnitus will not sound like anyone else’s tinnitus, everyone is different.  Even my tinnitus is different on different days.  It sounds much different now than it did at the time of this recording.  I want people to know that just because I’m deaf it doesn’t mean I just hear silence when I take off my cochlear implants.   Here is that post, I hope you enjoy it:

I happen to be losing my hearing due to Meniere’s Disease.  So music is very hard for me.  I can’t really hear it even with my hearing aid, it sounds very tinny.  However, I have tinnitus all the time, so I hear noise all the time.  At this time I’m deaf in one ear, and have fluctuating loss in the other ear, the other day I was having a particularly low hearing day.  Deciding my hearing aid really wasn’t doing any good, I decided to just leave it out.  That was the day, I read this prompt.  I thought, I couldn’t have a song.  Then I thought, even when I’m deaf, due to the tinnitus, I will hear sounds all the time.  NO, they won’t be sounds I want to hear, but I will hear sounds.

I talked with a friend of mine, Vincent Morrison,  who is a sound engineer.  He agreed to help me record something similar to what I hear every day. Please know, my tinnitus changes A LOT.  It varies constantly.  But these sounds always seem to be around.  We did put in some of the startling sounds that just come out of no where that scare me.  We didn’t make it as loud as it can be. (I did want people to be able to listen to it.)  I wanted to represent that my tinnitus can be softer, a medium tone, and I would say deafening…but that would be silly wouldn’t it?

So on a better hearing day, my dear friend came over and he tried his best.  I must admit I’m not the best person at describing sounds.  I am so touched to have this recording.  Trying so long and so hard to explain just a little of what I hear has been so hard, now…this is my song.

“My Songs of Silence” – sound recording by Vincent Morrison

Artwork by Wendy Holcombe – “Fractured Ear”

If you’d like to read more posts from today please search for #HAWMC and check out WEGO’s Facebook page.  Don’t forget to Like Picnic With Ant’s Facebook Page too.  🙂

If you would like to share your story on Picnic with Ants, contact me through the contact form on my About Me – Contact Me Page.