MES

Who knew there was such a thing as Musical Ear Syndrome?

 

MES is a form of auditory hallucination, but one that doesn’t require an underlying psychosis.  (It’s not voices.)  We all know about tinnitus, that steady background noise that seems to increase with age.  People with hearing loss are more prone to tinnitus and it can get louder and more distracting as the hearing loss gets more profound.  A special few, go beyond tinnitus to musical ear syndrome.  MES is not an earworm.  It’s not a memory of a catchy tune or limerick that keeps going round and round.  Sometimes with hearing loss, as the world goes quieter, the brain starts to fill in the blanks.  It makes its own music.  Judy is one of those special few.  For her, it started out as stringed instruments, like classical music.  It wasn’t a particular song.  She doesn’t have a great repertoire of classical music in her head to draw from.  It was just random stringed instruments.

 

It’s not too bad during the day, while there are other distractions.  As the world gets quieter at night however, the music gets louder and louder to the point of distraction.  It interferes with sleep.  Sleep deprivation and incessant sound.  Isn’t that how prisoners of war are tortured?  Or maybe that’s how to get rid of pigeons at the shopping mall.

 

Whatever, there are coping mechanisms to get through the night.  We have a headband with little bluetooth speakers in it that Judy can wear and listen to counter programming while she falls asleep.  Meditation music or massage music.  Something with patterns to it.  We read that for most people the MES phenomenon eventually just goes away, and now, several weeks into the experience, it seems to be getting better for Judy.