A New Room

It was Monday, three weeks after I’d experienced the sudden hearing loss in my left ear, and there was still no change in my condition. That morning I was taken out of the ward. I was wheeled out in a wheelchair through the hospital to the Ears Nose and Throat area. I remember feeling so happy to be away from the ward, where I had spent every moment during the last 2 days, and I smiled at my boyfriend who was accompanying me.

First I went into a room with a small booth where I had another hearing test. It is difficult to do a hearing test when you have pressure and roaring tinnitus in one ear, and I found it challenging to distinguish between the beeping sounds that were being transmitted through the headphones, and the tinnitus. I also had the problem that when the technician played a loud sound into my deaf ear, I wasn’t able to hear it in that ear, but instead could hear it in my right ear. My head was conducting the sound that my left ear couldn’t hear. To solve this problem, a loud wind-type sound was played into my working ear to mask the conducted sound, to help me concentrate my left ear on the beeps; in actuality, this meant that it was even more difficult to concentrate. Next, I was wheeled down the corridor and around the corner, to another room where a man put small plugs into my ears to check the pressure. Then I had a consultation with a specialist. She was a different specialist to who I had seen on the Friday when I was admitted to hospital, but was friendly and also spoke good English. She explained to me that there was no improvement in my hearing test, and that I’d have to stay in the hospital at least until Wednesday, as they wanted to see if I would have any response to further treatment.

Later that day, I was finally taken off the A&E ward and into a room that I would be sharing with one other patient. My new roommate was an older woman of whom I found it very difficult to guess her age, as she seemed to look younger with every day as she recovered from the complications she’d been having after surgery. Our room was simple, but comfortable. There was a window which allowed natural light to illuminate our days. We had a shared bathroom with a shower and sink, and two large plastic orange tubs of some mysterious liquid of which I never discovered its purpose.  My new roommate was a perfect hospital companion. She occupied the bed near the window and she valued her privacy. We often we passed our days with the curtain drawn between our beds, engaged in our own worlds either side of the curtain. She would spend her days reading, and I would spend time anxiously trying to relax, alternating between activities; reading, writing phone messages to friends and family, and sleeping. Every now and then, my roommate would peek around the curtain and check I was OK. She would always insist that if I needed anything then to let her know and she would get it for me. She told me that she had been in the room for three weeks, and hence she knew how things worked in the hospital. My roommate also kept me amused. I had heard her having discussions with the doctors who told her that she was to continue to just drink water and liquids, and not to try eating solids yet. However, every day her sister would come to visit her, and I would hear rustling sounds from behind the curtain. A little peek around this curtain revealed them eating rice cakes!

Early that Monday evening a nurse came into our room to give me my new medication, something which I wasn’t prepared for.