the curse of the flute......(long)

[Berti66]

or is it the magic?
You decide.
I have started playing the flute this year May and in short time obtained three flutes to play with.......sounds like nothing special on it? But wait....
What makes it special is that I do have a hearing loss over 80 db, so I wear an hearing aid which works real well.
Before starting on the flute I was taking whistle lessons but once I heard one of the listmembers living near me play flute, I was lost.......
So practicing it was and making slow progress, just finding out about embouchure....

Then july this year, I got inner ear problems that scared me to death.......sounds got muted and I had to have my hearing aid adjusted to be sharper and louder.
Problems continued and I was sent to an ear specialist who could find nothing wrong with sinuses, throat or ears.
Had audiograms done, eardrums function tested, no results, the only thing the specialist said was that "maybe" the eardrums are just a tad pushed in or out and that because I do have a hearing loss, it matters so much more to me than to a normal hearing person.
Next monday I am to have an CT scan and hoping here something will show up.

Needless to say under how much stress and how depressed, sometimes too, I have been recently and all that because I , with an hearing loss like mine , do want to play flute.
I don't want to live without my flute anymore.......
Even more now, that since this monday a friend and listmember let me borrow his grinter ...........that had me inspired again to keep going even now when I hear so badly, to not lose my embouchure even be it just ten minutes a day....so I am practicing again just for that and to get a daily flute fix, and to remember myself what I am fighting for.

There are moments that I just want to give up but I cannot..........it is calling me, that feeling deep inside......for the love of the flute, I will go on.......if the scan doesn't point anything out, I will get second opinions.
The specialist has no idea what could be wrong.
Also he has no experience whatsoever with what happens inside your ears when you play flute because this is important information...........
When I play a while, all of a sudden I hear nothing.....very scary but when clearing the ears the sound returns......

If anyone on this list has any experience with ear problems and flute playing please contact me, maybe you can help me solve this mystery and
enable me to play again.

greetings
berti

[Ben Shaffer]

Berti,
I had a sudden, almost total hearing loss in my right ear about 10 years ago. I visited my neighbor who was an ENT specialist.
It actually turned out to be a viral Infection, and my hearing returned to normal in about a month.
Had to take prednisone which I think was worse than the hearing loss!
Ben

[Whistlin'Dixie]

Next monday I am to have an CT scan and hoping here something will show up.


berti

An occasional patient of our turns up with an acoustic neuroma, a tumor on the 8th cranial nerve. As you probably already know, this is what they are looking for on a CT scan. Good luck and hopefully all news will be good news!

Mary

[Dragon]

I am so sorry to hear of your ear problems. Its interesting to me that when you play the flute you loose hearing. Does this problem happen when you hear other pro-longed music...CD, TV, or radio? If not, I think that the act of blowing the flute is putting stress on what ever the problem is.

This could be helpful in a way...bring the flute with you to your doctor and have him/her look inside your ears while you play...perhaps he/she can tell if something is being squeezed. I know that your jaw is important for playing the flute as it is slightly ajar and you use fine movements of it for help in creating an embouchure. Your jaw is connected to your ears via the ear tubes that need to be unpluged when you fly. Perhaps there is a problem with your jaw that is being reflected in your ears...nerves can do strange things. There are clues as to what the problem is.

[jim stone]

Find better physicians, I say.
I've had some very weird experiences with
such people. Plenty of fish.
find the best, if there is a clinic
somewhere that specializes
in this sort of thing, go there.
If you have to travel,
I' would do it.

Amazing the incompetence, and worse,
that I've run into in hearing related
services. Good luck, Jim

[Cathy Wilde]

God bless you Berti, keep trying doctors, keep playing, and remember Ludwig van Beethoven. You can do it, too.

Praying for you,
cat.

[Tipple/fipple Flutist]

post removed

[Lambchop]

Check your PMs, Berti.

[jim stone]

As a disabled player who probably is nuts for taking up an instrument that I should not even be able to physically play, I understand your pain and anguish over losing the ability to do something that means so much to you.
As a note to those who are not chronically ill, It is not wise to change Dr's or get a physician insulted by your going to another Dr behind his back, you can end up blacklisted, (yes, this does really happen), and then you will not be able to get any kind of help. The Dr she is seeing is baffled by her condition, but has not abandoned her, he has ordered more proper testing, and if that doesn't show something, he will try more testing... I know these guys real well, they are not quitters.
Also, your insurance company would not take kindly to you changing your DRs without a proper referal. You probably all already know this, but it is worth mentioning to those who think it's easy to shop around for a Dr. and not have problems.
To Berti:
Hopefully the CT scan will point out your problem and be easily remedied, if not, keep seeing your Dr. until he either discovers the problem or refers you to someone who can.
As a regular habitual reluctant patient and medical insurance junkie, I know you probably have to be patient and go through the Dr. first assigned to your case.
My current solution lay in going back diligently to my Dr after each remedy failed and insisting further testing and medications were tried. We finally struck on a medication that helps with both problems, but not in the long term. (Anyone have a spare Kidney or two? How about a few extra neck vertibrea?)
Believe me, I will be back in his office as soon as I have more trouble, and will fight to the end to keep playing, however painful or long it takes.
I am determined to find solutions to my problem and so are you. Keep searching for answers, be your own health advocate and soon you will be on the mend. Never give up, never give up.
I will pray for you, and play my healing Native American Flute for you tonight. Perhaps it will not help, but it certainly won't hurt. All my prayers are with you.
Your bravery is inspiring.
Perhaps someday the deaf flute player and crippled incontinent flute player will meet and play a triumphant duo. So let it be, so let it be done.

Permit me to disagree emphatically, both factually and morally,
with most everything you say in this post.

Jim Stone, Ph.D. Medical Ethics.
I have, by the way, specialized in the
care of disabled people--both theoretically
and personally. Also I speak from personal
experience in dealing with my own
hearing loss.

[Tipple/fipple Flutist]

post removed

[AaronMalcomb]

Dr. Stone-You are the first emphatically disagreeable physican I have ever met. I will bow to your superiority and post no more on your forum.

Terri, you must have misread Jim's comments. He is one of the least disagreeable people on C&F. Opinionated perhaps, but I've always enjoyed his posts and found him helpful and gracious.

And not to nitpick but he has a PhD, not an MD or DO, and therefore not a physician.


Cheers,
Aaron

[Lambchop]

Terri, you must have misread Jim's comments. He is one of the least disagreeable people on C&F. Opinionated perhaps, but I've always enjoyed his posts and found him helpful and gracious.

And not to nitpick but he has a PhD, not an MD or DO, and therefore not a physician.

Cheers,
Aaron

I'm not so sure Terri "misread" anything. To my reading, Jim's post WAS rather disagreeable.

It was certainly lacking in charity and compassion.

Let's look at what he said:

Permit me to disagree emphatically, both factually and morally, with most everything you say in this post.

That's a strong statement--looks like he's disagreeing with her facts AND her morals. Yup, her MORALS. (Unless it's his morals that are doing the objecting--hard to tell by the way it's written.)

Whatever. Let's look at what he's disagreeing with so emphatically:

I understand your pain and anguish . . . He doubts she understands?

Hopefully the CT scan will point out your problem and be easily remedied, if not, keep seeing your Dr. until he either discovers the problem or refers you to someone who can. He doesn't hope the problem will be easily remedied? Doesn't think Berti should persist?

The Dr she is seeing is baffled by her condition, but has not abandoned her, he has ordered more proper testing, and if that doesn't show something, he will try more testing... I know these guys real well, they are not quitters. Jim thinks they ARE quitters? That they've abandoned her? That they won't order more proper testing?

As a regular habitual reluctant patient and medical insurance junkie, I think Terri should know if she's a RHRP&MIJ or not. Shows all the signs of one to me, too. Jim knows better because he's got a PhD?

I know you probably have to be patient and go through the Dr. first assigned to your case. Not an inaccurate assessment of managed care at all!

My current solution lay in going back diligently to my Dr after each remedy failed and insisting further testing and medications were tried. We finally struck on a medication that helps with both problems, but not in the long term. Jim thinks something's wrong with persistence and self-advocacy? Or, he disagrees that her medication won't help in the long term?

I . . . will fight to the end to keep playing, however painful or long it takes. I am determined to find solutions to my problem and so are you.
Keep searching for answers, be your own health advocate and soon you will be on the mend. Never give up, never give up.

I will pray for you, and play my healing Native American Flute for you tonight. Perhaps it will not help, but it certainly won't hurt. All my prayers are with you.

Your bravery is inspiring. So what's the problem with this? Looks like an inspirational, comforting message to me. Perhaps it's the healing flute bit? Or the prayers? Or maybe he just doesn't think Berti's bravery is inspiring?

Perhaps someday the deaf flute player and crippled incontinent flute player will meet and play a triumphant duo. So let it be, so let it be done. A moral objection, perhaps, to disabled fluting?

So, here we are, having covered 90% of her post and having seen that it's not particularly objectionable. I'm wondering now just what was the "most everything you say" that Jim objected to. Sure can't have been the 90% above.

It wasn't any of that? No? Well, then let's look at what is left. I suspect Jim's objection lies in one or both of these statements.

Also, your insurance company would not take kindly to you changing your DRs without a proper referal. You probably all already know this, but it is worth mentioning to those who think it's easy to shop around for a Dr. and not have problems.

From this statement, I'd bet that Terri has managed care. In that context, it's quite accurate. Even if she doesn't have managed care, it's still fairly accurate. Insurance companies, particularly managed plans, do not, in fact, take kindly to patients shopping around. They demonstrate their displeasure by failing to approve and/or pay for services, thus making it difficult for patients. Given Terri's medical problems, it's highly likely that she has experienced this first-hand.

As a note to those who are not chronically ill, It is not wise to change Dr's or get a physician insulted by your going to another Dr behind his back, you can end up blacklisted, (yes, this does really happen), and then you will not be able to get any kind of help.

While I will admit that Jim may have a theoretical objection to this, and some may deny that it can happen at all, it is not impossible. In fact, if you have medical problems sufficient to cause chronic pain, this scenario is what will result if your doctor-shopping gets you labelled as "drug-seeking," "noncompliant," or just plain old difficult.

It's also possible for physicians to refuse to see patients when they know that their insurer won't pay. To the patient, this may have the appearance of blacklisting.

I have no idea if Terri has experienced that or not, but what she has stated above is not out of the realm of possibility. As much as we might not like it, it's not inaccurate.

Now, I'm not a physician. I'm not even a philosopher. But, I know from whence I speak on this issue because I earn my living by negotiating the slippery slopes of the American health care reimbursement system on behalf of patients and providers of one of the largest health care networks in the world.

Not that it really matters if I'm correct or not. What matters, I think, is that Terri's feelings were hurt. She expressed compassion and encouragement for Berti--which is commendable. She did a real nice thing.

Somehow, though, Jim managed to condemn "most everything" she said. After looking closely at the "most everything" she said, I'm baffled as to why.

And even if he had a good point, he could have been less arrogant about it.

And might have explained exactly WHAT the objections were. You know, like with some facts of his own? Something that might have helped someone?

[Tipple/fipple Flutist]

Thank you Peggy for your support, (and the support of those who have personally emailed me overnight to make sure I am OK, turns out there are alot of people who don't post because of fear of ridicule).
I was hurt by the blanket condemnation, perhaps Jim doesn't like native american flute players or something, it's beyond me...
I don't want this poor womans thread to be hijacked by some kind of debate over who the superior beings are on this forum.
Lets give it a rest. This woman needs compassion
Thank you Jim for giving me the greatest signature file a girl could ask for, this way you won't have to follow me around contradicting my uneducated ignorance...
Like the surgeon general warning on cigarette packs....I should carry a warning label.

[mvhplank]

When I saw Jim Stone's post following Terri's (if she is Tipple/Fipple Flutist), I was afraid what happened would happen.

I have to confess I don't read Jim's longer posts because (in my view) he spends too much time trying to convince the reader he's very smart and therefore must be right about something.

Sometimes he is.

Alas, his shorter posts, as we see, don't explain enough. I agree that just a tad more explanation was what I looked for in that answer.

On the other hand, Terri is awfully quick to let her feelings get hurt and then lash back. This is a forum for talking about flutes, for pete's sake. If you think about it, nothing written here has to matter in our off-line life. And, life's too short to carry around the irritating baggage.

So, keep the encouraging and supportive messages, and when you're irritated by a post, be welcome to start a cool-headed discussion, knowing you're free to get up and leave at any time.

I've had some colossal bang-ups with one or two people on the whistle forum, and earlier in the woodenflute discussion group, because I didn't learn to just blow it off soon enough.

Do you really care about Jim's opinion enough to let get you that upset?

M
--------------------
PS--I have psoriatic arthritis and at one point had to give up my beloved horses. I'm on a wonderful new drug now that makes me feel like I've been given my life back. I wish it worked on everyone.

PPS--I'd get rid of the new signature and find one more positive.

[Tipple/fipple Flutist]

Not upset anymore, just having some fun with it.
Jim's big enough to take it if he can dish it out.
I like Jim, I find him interesting and intelligent.
I don't know why this has happened, don't really care.
So I'll have my fun with it for a while, then let it go.