I’ve had positional vertigo most of my life, tinnitus, and lately, a roaring in my left ear that came and went with the last cold, and then decided to stick around for two months.

The Ear-Nose-Throat doctors around here wanted $400 to take a look-see. Now, I haven’t had a hearing test for ANYthing since. . . maybe grade school? But I don’t have 4 large to give for what I know will likely be a diagnosis of: Meh, give it time. Eh, we don’t know. Or, OMG! We need to extract your wallet! Stat!

So on Monday I went online to see what sorts of clinical studies were being conducted at the local medical university. For ear stuff. Or stuffed ears. I found one that seemed just right, called, set it up and went today.

Can You Hear Them, Clarice?

I answered questions about the vertigo, about work history, rock concerts, gun range exposure. I did run a printing press for five years, and that’s mighty noisy stuff. So anyway, then I took some language skills tests, aptitude tests, fine motor skills tests. Then they looked in my ears and found them demurely free of any wax buildup and proceeded to test my hearing.  Simple: listen and indicate.

Afterward, the tech came into the room with his assessment grid and said, Man! You have the hearing of a child, of a kid! Lookit this! Most people are here, just down from the top but you’re at the very top of every area! That’s amazing! [I later relayed this info to my son who quipped, “Yep. Radar ears! Just like Grandma had!”]

I feel rather vindicated for all those times when I heard a certain sound in the car’s engine. I’m not imagining it, as the J.R. often accuses. It also explains why I don’t sleep at night. I hear every thing. (Yeah, I heard that, too. Don’t make me come back there!)

Then they did a test I call “ear glaucoma test,” where they jet-puff your ear drum to see if there’s any fluid behind it. This is the test I wanted done. It took all of 2 minutes. Everything was perfect.

Lastly, they made me listen through headphones to 20 minutes of background chattering voices while every 8 seconds a word was spoken and I had to repeat it afterwards as the chatter continued. 20 minutes of background conversations that sounded like about 100 people in a restaurant, all sitting near my table. That was really interesting because I found myself rocking my feet to a rhythmic 8-count and concentrated on counting instead of listening to the noisy convos “all around me.”  At least I didn’t feel lonely!

Then they gave me $20. To keep.

I have two more visits, the last one will be a two-hour MRI as they study my brain waves while I do language recognition tests. And they’ll pay me another $60 when it’s all done. Plus, they’ll send my MRI images to a radiologist for eval, just as a courtesy to make sure I have no “brain muffins” as Ms. Froth calls them.  They said I could see them if I wanted. I assured them I did NOT want to look at an image of a bald head, or see my own eyes in that metallic gray 3D imagery. I would pass out cold. She assured me it is rather creepy.

So. A two-hour MRI. I’ll get first-class brain-scan and a check-up from the neck-up. For less than free!

Here’s hoping I don’t have any metal fragments in my eye balls! They never did find that magnet that I put up my nose when I was a little kid, either.