Phthursday Musings: Muse In Your Ear

Ear tubes are tiny, hollow cylinders that are surgically inserted into the eardrum. This opening enables drainage of the middle ear, allows air to flow into the middle ear and prevents the buildup of fluids behind the eardrum. An ear tube is usually made of metal or plastic. (Source: Mayo Clinic)

Look: Either you’ve dealt with ear tubes or you haven’t. If you haven’t, you probably find the prospect of puncturing the eardrum with a tiny little tube to be appalling.

As a child, I had ear tubes. Not once. Not twice. I had to get four sets of tubes because I just kept getting ear infections, because the fluid buildup was restricting my hearing. I mean, look at this. Bulging, inflamed eardrum! Swollen eustachian tube! THICK MUCOUS!

I remember being told that it was one-in-a-million to need four sets. (Now, my wife could tell you that I’m definitely one-in-a-million… but she wouldn’t be talking about my ears. She’d have a pretty long list of other things to bring up though, probably including this paragraph.)

After four sets, though, the ear tubes fully worked. I can hear! I do not have chronic infections! I do not need to furiously pull on my ear lobes in a vain attempt to gain relief!

They were also formative in other ways. The one huge rule with ear tubes was: Don’t put your head under water, don’t let water get into your ears! This was drilled into me. And so from a very young age, forward several years, I could be in a pool, but I couldn’t actually go swimming. I couldn’t put my head under water. When the tubes were finally gone, I was so spooked about putting my head under water that I was effectively hydrophobic. To this day, I’m a terrible swimmer. I can get around in a furious splashfest - which I quite like engaging in - but I don’t really like just being in the water.

Because I had so many problems with my ears, I spent a whole lot of time at the doctor - both my pediatrician and my ear doctor. The formal term is otolarynologist, usually shortened to ENT (ear, nose, throat), but as a kid, the most formal term I knew was “ear doctor”.

My pediatrician was Fred Smith. In my memory, he was a very kind man, and at the time he was my doctor, already an old man. If you were going to cast a kindly old pediatrician from the 1970s, it’d be Fred Smith.

I spent more time though with my ear doctor, Bruce Mer. He was different. Not as old. In retrospect, I’d say he was more… scholarly? And also, he was an escalation point. Everybody had a pediatrician, but most kids didn’t have an ear doctor. So there was something more serious. Not in his demeanor maybe, but rather in the whole process of being there. Dr. Smith was your friend. Dr. Mer was the guy who would fix things.

I write all this as I learned this week from my friend Terwiliger - a fellow one-time patient - of the passing of Dr. Mer a couple weeks ago at age 87. His obituary is impressive: he helped develop the first fiberoptic endotoscope, he practiced for over 40 years, he even took up silversmithing as a hobby. That’s an obituary you read and think, wow, that was a life.

My parents would probably know better… I just can’t remember when the last set of tubes came out. Third grade, probably. So it’s been nearly 40 years. At this point, intellectually I might try to argue otherwise, but absolutely, my hearing is just something to take for granted. But that’s not really how it was. Inserting tubes, that’s surgery, under general aesthetic. Four surgeries to get it right. So many bottles of Dimetapp. So many bottles of Ceclor, until that stopped working and I was switched to Amoxicillin.

And to think back and have the realization click: I didn’t just have a doctor, I had a kick-ass doctor.

Thank you, Dr. Mer. Rest in peace.

I’ve done my worst to keep these ears in pristine shape over time, attending way more than my share of screamingly loud rock shows.

The absolute loudest band I ever saw was The Who in 1988. It’s probably more surprising that I saw The Who when I was 11 than it is that I would identify them as the loudest band. Aside from it being so… damn… loud… what I remember from the show are Pete Townshend’s windmills, and, for whatever reason, the song I most distinctly remember is “Face the Face”, a Townshend solo song from 1985. I couldn’t find live Who footage, but I did find this, and wow is it freaking weird, especially the hats:

The loudest band I saw in a club, I think, was Dead Meadow, opening for Sleater-Kinney in 2005. They were loud enough that when I saw the same bands later that month in D.C., I actually bought foam earplugs there for Dead Meadow’s set.

I’m going to assume you all know The Who, but that most of you don’t know Dead Meadow. They were ascendent in the first half of the aughts, and they’re somewhere on the psychedelic / stoner rock spectrum. Black Sabbath some 30 years later as a slower, louder, dronier band. I quite liked them, though they were a little outside my wheelhouse, and if anything seeing them live kind of dissuaded me from diving into their discography. But hey, sometimes, kind of like pistachio ice cream or whatever, sometimes slow psychedelic is just right, right?

Before the pandemic started, I had gotten my hands on some good earplugs - I mean, maybe, I don’t know if they’re truly better than the next pair. I managed to wear them once, I can’t even remember when, before I lost them. But a couple months ago now I found them - right where I should have been looking for them all along - and have worn them a couple of times in recent months.

I feel like I should have a better understanding of such things. I should know more about decibel levels and what the earplugs are supposed to accomplish, etc. I feel this way about a great many things!

The reality is that I don’t hear as well out of my right as out of my left, especially high frequencies. The difference is most notable in bed - if I roll from one side to the other, the white noise machine is louder / quieter and the tone changes. I assume the time will come when I need a hearing aid, at least in my right. Alas, when that happens, it happens. Rock and roll can never die, right?

I don’t have pierced ears. I never considered it. I don’t have any issue with what anyone else does, but… why would I do that?

Along similar lines, I don’t have a tattoo, and have never seriously considered getting one. If tattoos are your thing, that’s cool, but… why would I do that?

Because these are things I don’t do and haven’t done, they’re not things I think about too often. I’m sure there’s something to psychoanalyze there! But we don’t usually dwell on things that we don’t do, especially the things we’ve never seriously considered doing. We’ve so overwhelmed by the things that we do do!

Maybe like two people picked up the reference in this week’s title. I just stumbled upon it by trying to find something else to write this week. Jazz pianist Mose Allison released a live album in 1972 called Mose In Your Ear and the album cover is magnificent and although I’m totally unfamiliar with it, I had to include this here:

I meant to keep this installment short, what with all the other writing I’m doing this week, but I just kept finding more nonsense to add. So it goes.

I can’t finish though without offering your ear… some brand new flava.