The 5th most valuable player in baseball history (right) and Adolf Hitler (left, also the 4th most valuable player in baseball history).
It's good to start from the beginning here, as a significant event coincided with the sudden onset of the impairment in my left ear.
Not something particularly important or traumatic to me (you know, other than the hearing loss), but something kinda sad altogether. June 18th, 2024, I was watching New York Mets baseball on SNY. Mets at Rangers. I recall this is the series where Mark Vientos went off and got like 7 hits in 3 games. Anyways that's how I found out that Hall of Famer and "Probably One Of The Greatest Men To Ever Touch This Piece Of Shit Earth" candidate Willie Mays had died. I was pretty bummed but honestly, I wasn't there to witness him play. His old ass played his last game for the Mets in 1973. Neither of my parents were even conscious then. I still acknowledged his greatness and looked at his Baseball Reference page and whatnot. But not too long after that news came to light, that's when it all happened. Within an instant, boom, left ear went completely AWOL. Not a bang, not a whimper, it just happened. Very uncharacteristic in comparison as to if it were to be caused by trauma from a loud sound like an explosion or the sound of some Wasian's shitty Nissan engine, it was like a clog akin to swimmer's ear. I was left in shock for a few minutes and to get up from my seat to recalibrate; crazy considering that I just wanted to eat my steak (it came out pretty good too). The subtle melancholy that came with suddenly being informed of the death of one of the game's greatest was exchanged with another one of equal force: "too bad I can't fucking hear."
The 5th most valuable player in baseball history (right) and Adolf Hitler (left, also the 4th most valuable player in baseball history).
It was accompanied by nauseating and loud tinnitus, the nausea former likely coming from the complete disorientation brought about by losing hearing in one of your ears when you've been balling out with both well-oiled for the first 17 years of your life. It's certainly better now, but holy shit was this horrible to deal with on its onset; doing as much as going outside for more than 10 minutes made me dizzy and nauseous by proxy. I found myself further secluded than I already was but, honestly, it was ok because I still held zero faith in my own ability and figured it would be more liberating to forfeit a traditional life of success in exchange for being given money by the government. I knew I'd get used to it eventually, so I was like "damn, potentially progressively debilitating hearing loss on TOP of everything else? I'm truly blessed." I should've made it more clear to myself that even something as small as this could have some pretty damn annoying ramifications on pretty much everything I did then going forward. There aren't a lot of "unique" problems that come with something like this, but they still very much exist-- and there are a lot of them-- most of them fortunately being tied to social scenarios. Like that was something I was ok with already, just as I had been becoming fully accustomed to doing shit on my own. Whatever. Let's talk about it.
This is like my least favorite fucking thing in the whole entire world already and not being able to properly communicate in some environments (wide-area, ambient sound) makes it even worse. Not to mention that I'm already inherently sympathetic in regards to service workers. Like, I'm already going to assume that, no matter how young or old you are, your life sucks pretty fucking bad at this current moment, and I'm going to take that to heart and make thing as easy as it can be for both you and me. Predictably, not being able to hear what it is that they're asking of me is horrible. In fact, I feel like I'm going to have a panic attack. How fucking stupid would it be for you to repeat something so simple to me? Is there any use in communicating my disability beforehand? It doesn't particularly help on my side of the globe, where everyone especially is ESL yep they're ESL they're Mexican bro. Has this stirred me away from the literal bare minimum of interaction? No. Am I still scared? Yup.
If this shit's permanent I'm buying one of those 2015 Tumblr social battery sliders off of Etsy and finding a way to clip it onto any racially ambiguous clothing I may wear. I pride myself on not being completely retarded in regards to being able to interact socially, rather, it's just incredibly tiring if I'm trying to communicate ideas to say, more than two people. Having to think of times to cut into a conversation involving 4+ or more people is a mental exercise of its own; when it's online I have the leway of being able to hear everything I need to understand beamed at close range, whereas in real life it has become a fight to comprehend shit. I'm experiencing a bit of a phenomena where I'm able to hear something that comes out of someone's mouth, but my brain is simply just unable to process it, likely as the result of it being channeled through my left and, as a result, being weakened. I've found myself being more careful of my words and especially so trying to keep the spotlight away from me, because if asking a foreign service worker to repeat themselves isn't rude enough, asking someone trying to speak to you in earnest certainly is.
Going back and analyzing some of the finer details I can remember about the event, I could deduce that, if it were to be anything "reversible", it would likely be a result of earwax blockage. However, cleaning out my ear canals continuously did not seem to do anything for the week or so I did do so following The Incident. It's also worth noting that my family has a hilarious aversion to earwax and earwax-related issues. We just seriously never notice it and don't care until it becomes a problem. I recall one such instance happening to my grandpa at one point which resulted in his being medically drained. I should consider that as an option at some point.
The issue is then that it wasn't what my general practitioner told me.
I was told that it was almost certainly an issue with a wisdom tooth's growth blocking a nerve on the side of my jaw which in turn caused the impairment. I was told to wait it out until it fully grows in within a few months time, aaand look at me it's been 8 fucking months and we're still here. I still can't imagine it to be permanent, though. I can still "feel" it in some manner, that is, whenever i open my jaw a certain way, I feel the canal opening up and my hearing slightly improve. So maybe it is earwax, maybe something just died in there. Maybe it's cancer. I think I've had enough personally. Lord take me.