July 9, 2018--Audiological Tale: Fox News (Part One)

"You remember of course what happened in Cuba?"

I was at audiologist Gary Schwartzberg's office in Rockport to have earwax removed from my left ear where it was interfering with my hearing aid. I felt as if this side of my head was under water. And so I wasn't eager to get drawn into one of his looping discussions that typically wind up in a very different place from where they begin. Ordinarily I liked trailing along with him, he has a very interesting mind and great sense of humor, but not this time as I was uncomfortable and cranky.

"Now the same thing is happening in China."

"Can we talk about this after you see what needs to be done? I'm experiencing some pain. Not to say I can barely hear anything." I tapped my left ear to illustrate and yanked the aid out, thrusting it at him.

"Sure, sure. Sorry. It will only take a minute. I'll vacuum you out and you'll be as good as new. Then we can talk about . . ."

As a reminder as to why I was there I poked at my ear again, "That'll be the day. I know, I'll be as good as new."

Seeing I was in an agitated mood without further delay he took me down the hall to the treatment room where he had the earwax removal machine. As the process is a bit painful on other days when I've been less upset and not feeling sorry for myself, to lighten the mood I called it the Torture Chamber. More than a slight exaggeration.

Peering into my ear canal with his otoscope, I could barely hear him say, "Yes, yes. It looks quite occluded. Hold still. It will only take a minute." 

Some minute, I thought. He inserted the probe and turned on the vacuum pump. I gripped the arms of the chair and gritted my teeth so hard I was afford I might break them off at the gum line. I was again acting like a baby. Indulging myself by feeling sorry about my state of affairs and worrying that this might turn into a permanent condition. When my anxiety takes over this is where I go.

"Back to the other room," Gary said, upbeat again, "We're done with the torture part of the program. This should bring you some relief."

I mumbled something incoherent, not ready yet to engage his bubbly side. And, to tell the truth, with the hearing aid back in place, with my left ear, I wasn't hearing that well.

"Let me take it apart," he said, continuing to sound optimistic, "The problem might also be with the device itself." He swiveled to his work table and in less than a minute had the aid broken down into its component parts. They're tiny and so he peered at them with a magnifying device.

I was able to hear well enough to understand some of his mutterings. He was saying that one of the miniature microphones was corroding. "Don't see this often," he said, taking an even closer look in the tiny cavity where the microphones are located.

Then swinging back to me, in a loud voice so I could hear, he told me it was beyond repair and, the good news, since it was still covered by the three-year guarantee he could get me a new one.

"It will take up to a couple of weeks," he said, "But I think that's what makes most sense. In the meantime, I have a loaner that can get you from now until then. How does that sound?" he asked, grinning, feeling good about his ability to take care of the problem and knowing me well enough that this would help get me to stop obsessing that all was hopeless and that the next thing I would need was a cochlear implant.

"Can we now talk about China?" he said.

"What's with China?" I had calmed down enough to actually be interested in what was on his mind.

"You remember about a year ago there was the feeling that Russia was behind what they called a 'sonic attack' on workers in the American embassy in Havana?"

"I do," I said, "In fact I suspected you were somehow involved with this," he stopped smiling, "How, I thought as part of your audiological doctoral studies you did research about how high-frequency sound could be weaponized if bad people decided to exploit it. It could be used as a form of psychological warfare, including when torturing prisoners, and how . . ."

He cut me off. "We've been down this road before," he said, wearily, "You even wrote about it and posted stories about me on your blog. I told you at the time that you have an overactive imagination. Which was an understatement. That I never worked for the Pentagon or CIA of, for that matter, any governmental agency."

"Of course that's what they train you to say. You can deny and pretend all you want but at the time, last year, I gathered quite a bit of evidence that you were or might even still be involved. This area of Maine is home to dozens of intelligence types. Retired and otherwise. You would fit right in."

Dr. Schwartzberg stared blankly back at me.

But I was on a roll, "In fact, I suspected you were also using me as one of your subjects. While testing me and getting me the hearing aids I needed and adjusting them every month until they were just right for me, you played with my mind, making me crazy at times while at others I enjoyed what you were up to--it added spice to my otherwise routine life."

He showed me his poker face and then said, "And now we are learning that the Chinese are doing the same thing to our embassy in Beijing. A sonic attack. Maybe as part of the tariff war that Trump is launching."

"Why do you keep bringing this up if you're not somehow involved?" I pretended to be exasperated. The fluid in my ear had stopped gurgling and I was enjoying recalling last year's events and what he might be drawing me into this year.

"It's just because you seemed interested. Recall," he said, "last year you're the one who brought up the attacks in Cuba, asking if I had an opinion about it. I thought that was part of your research. That you were wanting to write about it. And so . . ."

"I just realized," I blurted out, "That last year I also had trouble with my left hearing aid. You had to send it to Starkey to have it serviced and while I waited for it to get back to you you gave me a loaner. Remember?" 

He resumed staring.

"It's all coming back to me," I said, feeling excited, "You told me, remember, that it came from one of your patients. A Czech woman who lived in Camden, I think, who had died and her family returned her hearing aids so you could use them as loaners. Sort of like how people leave their corneas and lungs and other organs to be transplanted to people who need them."

At this comparison, I thought I saw the flicker of a smile.

"And do you remember how, through that loaner hearing aid, "I was hearing from her. From the woman who had died. She was communicating with me, I thought, from 'the other side.'"

Recalling that, with my heart racing and out of breath, I felt gleeful.

I continued, "You told me I was either crazy or making up stories, as you claimed I am prone to do. Especially in my writing. But the loaner you're wanting me to use is the same one, right? I even remember the color. Bronze. How many bronze hearing aids are there? I'm right, aren't I?" 

His face was frozen, not giving anything away. We locked eyes on each other in a test to see who would blink first.

"What the heck," I finally said, as if to myself, but in fact to Gary, "What else do I have to do. I know I'm not going to go deaf from your machinations. I know you wouldn't play around with that even if you were full-time CIA It's still America, right?

End of Part One . . .

August 15, 2017--Inner Ear: An Audiological Tale (Part 1 of 2)

Dr. Gary Schwartzberg had my hearing aids hooked up to his computer. By doing so he could see if the adjustments he made during my last visit were still functioning properly.

"Looking good," I think he said. Without them in place I resumed lip reading.

"I'm happy to hear that," I said.

"And I can see that since you were here you used them on average 13 hours and six minutes a day." He said that loud enough so that I could hear the details.

"Really?" I said, "That's calculated by and stored in my devices?" I used "devices" since I know that's his preferred way to refer to my hearing aids.

"That's just the beginning of what I can see."

Feeling a little like my devices were a form of Big Brother, concerned about my privacy, I asked, "OK, I can handle it. What other kinds of surveillance is going on?"

"I can see from this that 76 percent of the time you were in quiet environments. Probably reading, writing, hanging out with Rona." Rona smiled at him. "And it looks as if you averaged less than an hour a day watching TV."

"The Trump news all day is driving me crazy."

"I understand that," he said, "I can tell how little you're watching by how often you activated the gizmo I gave you that blue-tooths the TV sound right to your devices. It doesn't look as if you listened to much music either by the looks of this," he was squinting at the screen, "I can also see you were out walking every day. Which I know is a good thing for you." He smiled at me.

"How does the machine know that?"

"You told me you live by the water and I programmed these to reduce the over-amplified sound of the wind and surf. Pretty impressive, right?"  He tipped back in his chair, rocking back and forth, quite proud of himself.

"One more thing," he was grinning, "It looks as if your breakfasts on average lasted almost 90 minutes a day. Probably because you were spending so much time arguing with Jack." He winked.

"You can see that?" I was incredulous, "You know what this sounds like?"

"1984?"

"Since you mentioned it, yes, 1984. To tell you the truth, this is not my favorite thing. I'm not a privacy junkie--in fact, since computing and big-data, I've basically given up on privacy. What we used to think of it no longer exists. I'm living with that. Not that I have an alternative unless I decide to live off the grid."

"Too late for that," Rona said, "Might as well try to make the best of it."

"So, are you telling me," I swiveled my chair so I could look directly at Gary," that these aids or devices, whatever, are like smart phones and computers--everything is stored forever in versions of hard drives?"

"They're not all the same. I think, yes, computers keep your emails forever even if you delete them. Ask Hillary Clinton about that. But for these," he tapped my hearing aids which he was about to reinsert in my ears, "the kind of information they capture and I told you about, is by comparison quite benign. I don't know what to tell you. If you're so uncomfortable about this diagnostic use of the chip capacity in your very high-tech hearing aids, we can move back to something simpler and . . ."

"I can complete the thought for you--'simpler but much less effective.'"

He was happy to hear that I wanted to keep the ones I've grown accustomed to and which have literally changed my life.

"One thing I can assure you is that the specifics of what you're hearing are not captured and retained. I mean . . ." He began to mumble. I could hear that quite well with the devices back in my ears. "I mean, maybe. If only . . . I don't know."

"Don't know what?" I was concerned about him sounding so confused.

He looked away and then uncharacteristically got up from his chair. "I'll be right back," he said, vanishing.

"I wonder what's going on," Rona said, looking concerned. "I mean, he never . . . I mean, he seemed confused. That's not like him."

"I agree," I said. "I wonder if anything I said upset him." We looked at each other and shrugged.

With that he was back.

He sat down, wheeled closer to us, and, lowering his voice, said, "There was this incident."

"Incident?" Rona and I said simultaneously as if in chorus.

"A couple of years ago. With this woman. A client of mine. A wonderful, much older lady. And she was a lady. Very elegant. Very self-confident. I really enjoyed working with her." He paused and again broke off eye contact.

"And?" I said.

"She had the same kind of devices you have. An earlier iteration of them. This was about three, four years ago. So much with technology changes over that amount of time. But they were pretty much like yours--Starkey Muses."

"That's it? That's what has you behaving so weird?" I was confused.

"There's more. Much more. Though she's no longer around." Gary sounded ominous.

"She's no longer around?"

"Like I told you she's quite old. I mean, she was . . ."

"She's dead?"

"Passed."

"And? That's it? I suspect that with your clientele being on the older side--like me," I tired to lighten things up--"this is not an infrequent occurrence. It's happening to me all the time. It feels like half the people I know are . . .  You know. One of these days Rona's going to need to call you to cancel my adjustment appointment. I mean, all my appointments, if you get my drift."

"I get it," he said, "But you'll be around for a long time. How old was you mother when she . . . ?" He trailed off.

"107."

"A good number," he said, sounding distracted, "As I was saying, my client . . . " Again he looked away. At the ceiling this time.

"She passed? She died? However you prefer to put it."

"I know I'm stammering," Gary said, "But what happened was so strange. Even weird."

"Just tell us what happened," Rona said empathetically.

He took a deep breath. "OK. You asked for it. Here goes."

"It's about time," I said, "If you don't get to it soon my hearing aid batteries will die. Sorry. I didn't mean to put it that way.

He smiled. I was glad to see some of the tension had abated.

Gary's story--

Let's call her Mrs. Caldwell. When she first came to see me, and subsequently, she was alone. Almost the first words out of her mouth were to tell me that though she was 87 she didn't think she needed hearing aids. As you know, this is not unusual. She told me she was here because her niece, who was her closest surviving family member, wanted her to be tested.

From the way she carried herself, walked, spoke, and dressed she felt much younger than 87. She was full of energy, as vital a person as I've ever encountered. I knew from just a brief time with her, when she came in for her diagnostic hearing test, that if she chose to become a client, I would enjoy working with her.

The test showed her hearing loses to be modest but were likely, over the next year or so, to worsen; and so my recommendation was for her to get ahead of the curve and not wait until they were absolutely necessary. I was happy that she, without hesitation, said she wanted to proceed and quickly decided on the Starkey Muse type. Like yours.

As you know it takes a few weeks for the devices to arrive and then over two to three months there are the required monthly adjustments. As I had anticipated, she was not only a pleasure to work with but also, getting to know about her life, among the most interesting people I have been fortunate to encounter.

I learned that she was born in England and her father, who was a surgeon and served in the First World War, was also a member of Parliament. Her parents sent her abroad, to America, where there were more educational opportunities for women. After secondary school, which she attended in Boston, she was admitted to and attended Mount Holyoke College, where she was a premed.

She next went to medical school, back in Boston, and though she aspired to be a surgeon in the family tradition--her brother was a neurosurgeon who was killed in the Korean War--it was difficult for woman at that time to be accepted for a surgical residency. So she became a psychiatrist instead and built a successful practice in Cambridge where her husband-to-be at Harvard was a professor of romance languages. By then Mrs. Caldwell considered herself to be an American and in the 1950s became a citizen.

They opted not to have children and, she felt, were a loving and successful couple. They had numerous friends and a rich social life. They were fortunate never to have economic worries and traveled to all seven continents, all the while managed to avoid most of the stress that is normal in major careers and in most relationships. She described them as having a life, as she put it,"Almost too good to be true."

Her husband died suddenly two years before I began working with her. She said he lived to his mid-80s and never spent a day in a hospital. That was true for her as well, she revealed, almost feeling guilty about her good fortune.

I interrupted--"So far nothing sounds weird. She is clearly amazing and blessed, but when does the weirdness begin?"

Gary continued--

Be patient. It is about to be revealed.

Final part tomorrow . . .

Harvard 1950