I Present to You...Tinnitus

Yeah I know that 'ringing in your ears' doesn't sound that interesting but this article on it in the New Yorker is kind of fascinating. There's brain scans, people!

Plus, I'm always facinated by stories of people who were totally normal and then bam!! Medical mystery and they're miserable. Like this guy:

"Last May, David Nowak, a sixty-four-year-old retired machine repairman, had an ear infection that his doctor treated with antibiotics. Shortly thereafter, he heard a loud horn in the street, and has been plagued by tinnitus ever since. ... Now, he said, “My life has come to a halt. I can’t do anything. I can’t concentrate.” One Sunday, he told me, he went out and stood by a metal flagpole during a storm, hoping that lightning would strike, and that he had gone to the cemetery and “begged my mother to take me. I wish I would pass away.”"

Aw! Sorry David.

And did you know, "...that hearing loss accompanying tinnitus is now the No. 1 cause of disability among veterans of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq."