About a little of what I do day to day. Basically I test people's hearing.
First I check in people's ear to make sure their ears look fine. Then I jam this probe thingy into their tight little ear canals, blow some air, and play some loud beeps to test the involuntary reflexes of their middle ear. Afterwards, I throw them into this claustrophobic inducing sound booth where I proceed to administer the hearing test. The sound booth has all the comfort of an electrocution room. There is a chair, a lot of wires and a Jeapordy clicker. A patient of mine once jokingly commented that he is afraid he would receive a shock for the incorrect/ nil response. If only he knew, if only... bless his heart, it must have been quite a jolt for him when I "accidentally" turn on the speakers a bit too loud... sound, after all, is a form of energy very much like electricity.
It begins with speech recognition which, believe it or not, has all the hallmarks of repeating back the order to the attendant through the drive thru speakers. I use probe words like hot dog, pancake, and ice cream over and over again, until the sound of the patient's stomach's grumbling is louder than my voice. To make it worst, my voice gets softer and softer until the patient can barely hear me. If this was indeed happening in real life, either the person would be throwing a fit at me for not enunciating, articulating and projecting correctly; or be completely disturbed by the fact that I am whispering to them. Either scenario, I would most likely end up beaten to a pulp. Instead, in the sound booth, I have complete control of them. I make them crave hearing my voice, their necks craning at insane angles trying to capture every little thing I utter. In the beginning, there was the word, and I spoke those words... muwahahaha.
Next, we move on to beeps. Here, the patient are presented with tone emitted at different frequencies at varying intensities until I can find their thresholds. Often times, patients end up feeling like they are hallucinating as the beeps they hear tends to be softer than the sound of blood pulsating through the veins in their ears.So paranoid they would become; every breath they take, every rustle of their clothing, every heartbeat could literally mean the difference between life and deaf. Why beeps you may ask, well, I am not quite sure yet, but I think for me it works perfectly to drown out the curses coming from me and/or the patient as we struggle to negotiate their thresholds. Some thresholds are quite elusive, as loudness is quite subjective. A person's perception of what they hear is all relative, and finding that exact perception takes a lot of relating back and forth. Hence, the repeated beeping.
When we are done beeping at each other, we have words again, sometimes a paragraph or two, but mostly words. This part is called word recognition, and it is often quite amusing to hear back what the patient thought I have said. I have captured quite a few Freudian slips... and let's just said some of the probe words are not all that innocent sounding either; like the words ditch, nag, whole... definitely got some confused stares when I had patients repeat those words back to me.
Finally, we move on to what we call bone conduction. Here, we have clinically proven that the saying "I can't get anything pass that thick skull of yours" is false. In fact, we have discovered when all else fails, a patient with a thick skull may actually hear better if we transmit the sound directly through the skull. Something about more particles in the bone medium for the conduction of sound than through air alone. Anyway, its pretty dandy to see the bone conduction at work.
Of course, I am over simplifying everything here. There is much science behind many of the techniques I used to test hearing - for instance what I am really doing when I am looking into patient's ear (I have been told if i stare hard enough, I can either see through to the other side, or China- my country of origin).
So, there you have it, I hear deaf people.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Behold My Face
Not too long ago, I came across a photo that looked like it could have come out of the National Geographic's Special Edition on the Mars Explorer. It showed a reddish landscape void of life - barren and filled with craters. If you looked closely enough, you would see traces of where the essence of life once flowed freely but now sucked dry and decayed. It was not a very promising photo, one may say it was very fitting for the issue of the lonely planet.
Yet, this was not a photo torn from an issue of the National Geographic, or for that matter The Geology Annals. No, this was a blow up picture of my face. Indeed, I was horrified to discovered that the contours that I had mistaken earlier for valleys and folds of a once lushed planet is in fact the outlines of my facial structures. That volcano in the background is actually one of my nostrils, and the craters in the surrounding environs are really the scars of a puberty gone terribly terribly wrong.
Ah, what agony, what despair it is to behold this heinous face of mine. So depraved, not even aliens would inhabit it. This is where uni-cellular organism came to die. It is a desert high in pH and rich in fossil fuels from failed cultures of bacteria. This is my face... and my oh miy, what a face it is. At last, I understand why I seemingly have the Medusa effect on others. What I mistaken for due reverence is actually disgust and mixed marvel at the planet Mars that seems to tread among mankind. I have inherited a countenance that could smoothen out sand paper.
Sensing my distress, a group of Andy-friendly persons formed a Blue Ribbon Committee to explore options on what can be done to alleviate the blemish region. After much reconnaissance, the committee discovered that what appears to be a barren wasteland is in fact a breeding ground for the inflammatory insurgents of Acne cells. These splinter cells have laid dormant over the years, accumulating the means to actually turn my face into a Weapon of Mass Destruction (WMD). Concerned that a future break out would crippled the region, making it susceptible to further erosion, the committee of Andy Friendly Persons (AFPs) called for a decisive preemptive strike on designated high threat regions. Operation FreeAcne was officially given the green light, and profiles of selected targets were drawn up.
Invasive facial products were quickly assembled, and deployed to the region on active duty. (The first time I heard the term Product, my mind immediately wanders to the many advertisements which populated my spam box. Luckily, the AFPs were quick to lift me from ground zero, and showed me the miracle that is Facial Products). In is decided that if we were to win this war on Acne, we must take the battle to them on their own turf.
The first part of Operation FreeAcne commenced with the carpet bombing of inflicted regions with Deep Cleansing Pellets (DCPs). These DCPs have the ability to penetrate deep into the foxholes of Darkhead warriors, flush them out and subsequently pulverize them. For the first few weeks, the Darkheads were pinned down by the heavy artillery of DCPs. Elite squads of Moisturizing Units (MU) were then deployed to systematically engage and destroy all aggressive Darkheads and Hormonal Insurgents (HIs). Night and day, with brutal efficiency, the MUs clashed head on with the HIs congregating in the area. Soon, much of the insurgencies were stemmed out, and the choke hold that the HIs once enjoyed over the inflicted area was broken
Once the region was stabilized, a team of Re-Vitalizing Specialists were sent in. They first steam-roller through the rabble, clearing it of layers of dead debris. Then, vital nutrients and moisture were air dropped into the region, providing relieve to the region that had suffered from drought and famine under the Acne insurgent's rule. Irrigation systems were implanted, and a temporary coalition of Vitamins was set up to help the region become self sufficient again. It remains to be seen how effective the treatment was, but as of now, it can be said that much of the wasteland has been reclaimed and are now showing signs of life again. AFPs will revisit the region in a couple of months to gauge the improvements made, meanwhile, the three core branches of Facial Product (Deep Cleansing, Moisturizing, and Revitalizing) continues to work hard in building attractions to the area again.
Yet, this was not a photo torn from an issue of the National Geographic, or for that matter The Geology Annals. No, this was a blow up picture of my face. Indeed, I was horrified to discovered that the contours that I had mistaken earlier for valleys and folds of a once lushed planet is in fact the outlines of my facial structures. That volcano in the background is actually one of my nostrils, and the craters in the surrounding environs are really the scars of a puberty gone terribly terribly wrong.
Ah, what agony, what despair it is to behold this heinous face of mine. So depraved, not even aliens would inhabit it. This is where uni-cellular organism came to die. It is a desert high in pH and rich in fossil fuels from failed cultures of bacteria. This is my face... and my oh miy, what a face it is. At last, I understand why I seemingly have the Medusa effect on others. What I mistaken for due reverence is actually disgust and mixed marvel at the planet Mars that seems to tread among mankind. I have inherited a countenance that could smoothen out sand paper.
Sensing my distress, a group of Andy-friendly persons formed a Blue Ribbon Committee to explore options on what can be done to alleviate the blemish region. After much reconnaissance, the committee discovered that what appears to be a barren wasteland is in fact a breeding ground for the inflammatory insurgents of Acne cells. These splinter cells have laid dormant over the years, accumulating the means to actually turn my face into a Weapon of Mass Destruction (WMD). Concerned that a future break out would crippled the region, making it susceptible to further erosion, the committee of Andy Friendly Persons (AFPs) called for a decisive preemptive strike on designated high threat regions. Operation FreeAcne was officially given the green light, and profiles of selected targets were drawn up.
Invasive facial products were quickly assembled, and deployed to the region on active duty. (The first time I heard the term Product, my mind immediately wanders to the many advertisements which populated my spam box. Luckily, the AFPs were quick to lift me from ground zero, and showed me the miracle that is Facial Products). In is decided that if we were to win this war on Acne, we must take the battle to them on their own turf.
The first part of Operation FreeAcne commenced with the carpet bombing of inflicted regions with Deep Cleansing Pellets (DCPs). These DCPs have the ability to penetrate deep into the foxholes of Darkhead warriors, flush them out and subsequently pulverize them. For the first few weeks, the Darkheads were pinned down by the heavy artillery of DCPs. Elite squads of Moisturizing Units (MU) were then deployed to systematically engage and destroy all aggressive Darkheads and Hormonal Insurgents (HIs). Night and day, with brutal efficiency, the MUs clashed head on with the HIs congregating in the area. Soon, much of the insurgencies were stemmed out, and the choke hold that the HIs once enjoyed over the inflicted area was broken
Once the region was stabilized, a team of Re-Vitalizing Specialists were sent in. They first steam-roller through the rabble, clearing it of layers of dead debris. Then, vital nutrients and moisture were air dropped into the region, providing relieve to the region that had suffered from drought and famine under the Acne insurgent's rule. Irrigation systems were implanted, and a temporary coalition of Vitamins was set up to help the region become self sufficient again. It remains to be seen how effective the treatment was, but as of now, it can be said that much of the wasteland has been reclaimed and are now showing signs of life again. AFPs will revisit the region in a couple of months to gauge the improvements made, meanwhile, the three core branches of Facial Product (Deep Cleansing, Moisturizing, and Revitalizing) continues to work hard in building attractions to the area again.
Monday, March 3, 2008
Innuendos
The sun swooped down and claimed another day. Yes, it swooped down. One minute it was perched up on the weather vane like a prized cock, the next (ok, so its more like 480 minutes later) it swooped down and another day is gone. A little premature one may say, but when a day is spent, it is spent, and we will have to wait for the sun to rise again. Needless to say, many of us nine-to-fivers are a little sore by this.
It is like this every day, the sun perks up early from the east and droops to the west; casting long shadows upon the cubby holes where we brood. Each day, we tried vainly to lengthen the hours, but always it ends the same, the sun goes down quicker than projected, swift as a kite. Everything is thrown subsequently into pitch blackness. On some nights, when we are lucky, the moon would comfort us by mooning us (its voluptuous hiney); but usually it just taunts us, revealing only half a cheek. Sometimes nothing at all, just a hint that it is still there beyond the silky evening.
The sun and moon, an alluring couple who never consummates, leaving in their wake many days unsatisfied. I got to tell you, it blows. It sucks how each day goes by unfulfilled. But I suppose it is better to be alive than to be dead, because living is orgasmic, dead not so much.
It is like this every day, the sun perks up early from the east and droops to the west; casting long shadows upon the cubby holes where we brood. Each day, we tried vainly to lengthen the hours, but always it ends the same, the sun goes down quicker than projected, swift as a kite. Everything is thrown subsequently into pitch blackness. On some nights, when we are lucky, the moon would comfort us by mooning us (its voluptuous hiney); but usually it just taunts us, revealing only half a cheek. Sometimes nothing at all, just a hint that it is still there beyond the silky evening.
The sun and moon, an alluring couple who never consummates, leaving in their wake many days unsatisfied. I got to tell you, it blows. It sucks how each day goes by unfulfilled. But I suppose it is better to be alive than to be dead, because living is orgasmic, dead not so much.
Sunday, March 2, 2008
Attic of soul
From the attic of my being, I withdrew my locked chest. Stored therein emotions and observations that I could not savor at the time of their occurrences lest I be distracted further. Articles of distress, items that caused me grief, these and many more I found, locked away. Now, liken to the perusing the life of a deceased projected upon the screen from reels upon reels of faded memories, I saw myself in different lights. I recall incidences that I had buried, memories that I have casted aside until a later date. Was I immature then, or was it just more willing to feel than I am now? There I am, always a younger turbulent version of me, suppressing feelings that were raging and ravaging within me. Seeking control as I have always done, I had locked these memories away until I deem it proper to unleash them in the privacy of my soul's basement. There they work themselves, tumbling, toiling, professing, expressing until they are spent. Then, and only then, when only facts remain, and emotions detached do I pick them up, embrace their truth and shelf them in the library of my experiences for future references' sake.
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