I shared this post to the ‘Association of Adult Musicians With Hearing Loss’ support group on Facebook.
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I had CI surgery on my left side Nov. 7th. Had NONE of the common unpleasant symptoms (except that coffee doesn’t taste quite right now). Incision has healed nicely and I have felt great for the past few days - but moved pretty slow the first couple days after surgery.
I took time after a few days and sat down at the piano for some practice - and just to see what the piano sounds like now. My left ear has zero hearing and my right side, always my ‘good’ ear, seems to be at about half the hearing level as it was before surgery. I assume that has to do with the connection with the left hearing aid now being broken - it misses its mate, I think!
Anyway, sitting at the piano and playing some new Christmas music I am learning, the piano sounds like it’s in a distant room - and it sounds like it needs to be tuned. Some of the higher pitches, especially, sound out of tune to me - and I've not heard the upper octave for a long time.
My wife and I attended church choir practice last night - this is one week and one day after surgery. I sit in the middle of the row of men (third row back, three rows total, about 25 singers). The piano is to the choir’s left (my ‘bad’ side).
I could *barely* hear the piano most of the time - and occasionally could not hear it at all. I could hear the singer to my right, barely enough to help me know if I was singing on pitch (I was, except in some of the high notes, and I realized when I was going off the tracks!). Occasionally, I could hear the tenor next to him. I heard no other singers when we were all singing. I was unable to make any sense of anything our director said.
I will continue to attend rehearsals - my wife sings soprano and I sing bass - but I will not sing the anthems during the worship services for a while. At times during rehearsal, it sounded to me like I was singing ‘solo’ - and a cappella - and nobody else was singing.
I know all of this will change again after my activation, which happens on Dec. 5th - so I have another almost three weeks of this most awkward sense of ‘musical imbalance.’ I expect the imbalance to worsen after activation. I’m eager for that day to arrive, so I will finally know where my starting point is for aural rehabilitation.
My wife and I will continue attending things and I’ll do my best at socializing (I’ve long-since learned when to ‘tune out’ or when to wander off and sit by myself).
Tonight is a performance of our local symphony; tomorrow night is a concert featuring Mahler’s ‘Resurrection’ Symphony, arranged for organ (and played) by British organist David Briggs, with several local choirs participating in the performance.
Our church’s annual Christmas concert is Dec. 10th and I will certainly miss being on the program. My ‘secret plan’ is to play the piece I’ve selected* sometime next summer, perhaps as an offertory or as the ‘special music’ one Sunday.
*It’s a toss-up right now, but will be one of four arrangements by Dan Forrest in his ‘Christmas Illuminations’ collection - either The First Noel, O Little Town of Bethlehem**, Huron Carol, or Silent Night. Forrest is a ‘new to me’ composer and I very much like his style of writing.
**Added 11-21-23: I plan to play O Little Town of Bethlehem at the Dec. 10th Christmas concert. As of about a week ago, I can hear well enough with my right hearing aid that I believe I’ll be able to play well enough on the concert, even if my CI processor provides ‘less than stellar’ hearing at that point. I can remove the processor, after all. On the day of the concert, I will have been activated only five days.
