This Senseless Life

Posted by Roie R. Black on Tue 20 October 2015

Don't get me wrong! It is not life, itself, that is senseless. I want to talk about living a life without senses! That is actually hard to do.

You all know the five senses we all are born with. (OK, most of us are anyway!)

  • Sight - ophthamoception
  • Sound - audioception
  • Touch - tactioception
  • Taste - gustaception
  • Smell - olfaception

Wow, I was not ready for those technical terms. Wikipedia turns up interesting stuff at times!

We take all of these senses for granted most days of our lives. That is unless you experience something that heightens your awareness of those senses.

Experiencing your Senses

Think about it, when was the last time one of your senses became the focus of your life, if even for a moment.

Touch

I banged my foot into a chair last night, after turning out the lights in the living room and walking to bed. My foot became the center of the universe until the pain subsided! I did not care about much of anything else until then!

Last week, my seeing sense was lit up when I say my doctor grab a knife and come at me to perform a minor surgery. I was not quite ready for that. I bet my eye (the only one I currently have) got big at that sight!

Today, in class, I heard an explosion of noise in the hall. Two girls were walking by my classroom where the door was open, and "exploded into laughter, just as they passed my class. IT disrupted the whole thing. Part of me wanted to slap them for being so inconsiderate of what was going on in that building, but I doubt it would have made any difference these days!

Losing Your Senses

Now comes the hard part. I have been losing my senses in various ways over these last eight years, and sometimes that loss is hard to deal with.

Hearing Loss

Before all of my cancer adventure started, I was aware that my hearing was fading a bit. I had an ear infection when I was stationed at SAC headquarters in Omaha back around 1985, and ended up with Tinnitus (ringing in the ear). I had to learn how to deal with a constant, fairly loud, high pitched pair of tones in my left ear, that never goes away. For the first six months I had to deal with this, it was hard to sleep. Gradually, it stopped being something I paid much attention to, and life went on. Still, it is always there!

I measure my hearing by the volume number on the TV I rarely watch, but which is usually on when am working with my laptop on the couch. I noticed that the number was creeping up a bit, and that told me I was losing some of my hearing.

Then came cancer and a ton of radiation into my upper jawbone, right next to my ear. I did not notice much of a change, but the radiation affected the entire area around my ear. My ENT was watching out for all of that, but I could tell he was worried about things.

MY second cancer surgery was again in the same area, but closer to my left ear this time. Nothing much happened to my hearing then, but things were very different on my third surgery. That time, as my new surgeon at M.D. Anderson put it, they "eradicated the eustachian tube" which runs from behind your ear drum down into your sinus region. That tube normally lets pressure inside your ear equalize with the air outside your head. (Those of you who are not pilots never think much about pressure differences, but they happen all the time, and can affect you in may strange ways. You know this, you have had your ears "pop" when the pressure changes, then releases as air makes its way back up that tube.

Only mine was shot. So fluid started filling up the area behind my ear drum, which effectively shut down my hearing completely on that side. Not good!

I discovered I could not make out folks speaking near to me, the number on my TV went way up. Add to that the problem that I could not tell where sound was coming from at all. With only one er working, I had no directional sense as far as sounds were concerned. It was no fun trying to listen to much of anything!

Time for Hearing Aides

I ended up buying a very expensive set of hearing aides, only to find out that the left one did absolutely nothing. Even cranked all the way up, I heard nothing. I did have improvement on my right side, which was really only fading from age related issues, not cancer issues. So I did get some improvement with the hearing aide.

I discovered that the mechanics on my left side were fine when I bought a pair of headphones with volume controls on both sides. By cranking the volume all the way up on the left side, and all the way down on the right (one notch above off completely), I was able to hear almost normally. Unfortunately, what I was hearing on the left side was due to "bone conduction". I was not hearing due to the ear drum vibrating. The sound was vibrating the bones in my head, and my ear was picking that up.

After Dr. Scholl poked a hole in my ear drum and put a plastic tube through it, some of that fluid did drain out, and my ear drum started working again. I do have a problem with draining fluid clogging up the hearing aide ear piece, so I have to clean it out often, but at least now I can hear out of both ears, and now my sense of where sounds come from is back.

I did not realize how much I used that sense, until I lost it!

Sight Loss

Seeing is another issue. Of course, I did lose my left eye to cancer 18 months ago, so my seeing is definitely affected. You actually only lose about 20 degrees in your total field of vision when you lose an eye. That is not as bad as you might think. However, I constantly feel there is something big over on that left side, blocking my sight over there. Weird! I do not actually see the big thing, I just feel like it is there.

When it first happened, I felt like I was living in a valley with a big mountain on one side. I was worried that when I took my "Big Sky" vacation in Montana this summer, I would not see the big sky. It turned out just fine! The sky was big enough to make an impression on me, even with only one eye.

What I miss the most about losing that eye is depth perception. With only one eye, doing precise things close up is hard. Tonight, I was trying to stick a tiny plastic wire into the tube that runs between the ear piece of my hearing aide that I stick into my ear canal, and the electronics body that hangs behind my er. The wire cleans out any debris that stops sound from reaching the amplifier. Getting the end of that wire into that tube was very hard to do, because I could not "see" where the end was!

Actually, depth perceptions is only really active out to about 20 feet. Driving is no problem, but maneuvering close to other things is hard. I am constantly worried that I am going to run into a pole in the parking garage as I drive around. And driving into an ATM machine is very scary. Sometimes, when I think I am so close to something, I will stop my truck and get out for a look. Most of the time I am a couple feet further from the thing than I think I am. Some day I will misjudge and bang into something, but so far so good.

Touch Loss

Then there is touch.

The surgeries have basically severed the nerves on the left side of my face as far as feeling goes. I cannot feel much of anything from below the eye (or where it used to be) and my lower chin on the left side of my face. The dead zone runs from my nose to my ear. Dr. Scholl was worried I would not be able to close my eyelid on that side after surgery two, but that part was fine. After surgery three, the entire eye went away, and there is no eyelid to close anymore. They sealed the entire area with skin from my leg!

I tell folks, "I am winking at you, can't you tell?" (Usually girls, of course!).

I have no feeling in the left side of my mouth either, so eating is a challenge. I lost most of my upper jawbone on that side and all those upper teeth, so chewing on that side is out of the question. The worst part of all of this is that since I have no feeling there, getting burned on something hot is easy to do, so I have to be careful.

Even brushing my remaining teeth is tough. I have absolutely no idea where i am brushing on that side. I am going to have to see the dentist more often to help with cleaning.

On the plus side, having dental work done on that side is no problem at all. My dentist does not even need to give me Novocain!

Taste Loss

Most of your taste comes through your tongue. The nerve damage in my mouth extends into half of my tongue as well, so I do not taste things the way I used to. Add to that all the radiation I had, and the left side of my mouth is a mess. There are no saliva glands working over there, so that side stays pretty dry. I have to keep something to drink handy, especially when I teach, so my mouth does not dry out completely.

The strangest thing about all that is that my taste has changed. I used to drink a lot of Diet Coke. Now, drinking that stuff tastes like drinking pepper! I simply cannot do it. Instead , I have switched to A&W Cream Soda, something I was introduced to by my grandfather when I was a kid. I can drink that just fine, but Cheryl is not happy with that, since it is full of sugar, and my cancer feeds on sugar! I am trying to wean myself off of that and move to flavored water. I do know that the fizz in the drinks helps me swallow (that is not a sense, but pretty important). My swallowing is bad now, again due to all the radiation. I have to drink "thick" fluids to help wash things down!)

Smelling Loss

Hey, I just realized something! I still smell fine. Well, I can smell fine, I am never sure that I physically smell fine. Then again, with all the radiation I have had, I might light up in the dark, so maybe if I do not smell fine, no one will notice! They will be so fascinated by my "glow"!

Living this Senseless Life

Sure I have a bunch of physical problems to deal with. But I do not dwell on those. I am telling this story because others reading this blog have loved ones (or themselves) to help through what life is throwing their way. We are all challenged by these kinds of problems, to be sure. My take on all of this is that that how you deal with all of this says a lot about the kind of person you really are. I do not want any one to say I caved in to any of this. I am fighting it and will keep doing so as long as I can!

All in all, I am a mess! But a living, breathing, blogging mess.

I intend to stay that way (the living part, that is! Maybe I can improve the mess part!)

Sigh!

Comments


There are no comments yet.

Add a Comment

You can use the Markdown syntax to format your comment.

tags: Stories