Hearing loss

Last week, we went down to Palm Beach to visit Curtis' mom. We booked ourselves a surfing class on Delray beach because it always seems so fun to us, especially when it's sunny and high 90s. After an hour tossing and hurling myself around in the ocean, both of my ears were blocked. For the past 5 days, I lived in a strange state of the muffled-land. Regardless of the ten different tricks I tried, including a bob pin down my ear canal and many other compulsive bodily maneuvers, nothing worked. I lived in this eerily quiet world and have these two little water jugs in my ears. I am often overwhelmed by the sounds of my own chewing when I eat, to a degree that makes me disgusted. I have never lost my hearing before and this makes me somehow think how much we take ordinary things for granted, like our ability to simply see, smell, hear, speak and touch. They can be appreciated on a theory level, but it really takes the loss of one of them for me to truly understand how lucky I am to have them.
The real horror is that we are going to a Coldplay concert tonight. I missed it last year when they toured in the Northeast, so I will absolutely be devastated if I go there half-deaf and listen to Chris Martin singing as if out of a broken radio from my across-street neighbor. So I called my doctor's office this morning at 8am desperately to get an appointment. 30 minutes on hold later, I was able to talk to a human being and luckily got an appointment with a certain Dr. Cahill. Not my primary, but that will do. I hope that she can get the stuffs out of my ears, water, sand, wax, chunks of plant, a miniature sea life, whatever it may be, for I need my hearing back by tonight's concert or I will, well, go to the concert with my two muffled ears.
I found how brave and extraordinary is it for one of my friends who has hearing deficit to navigate the world, to get a Ph.D., to learn foreign languages, to fall in love and have a beautiful daughter. Compared to her, I am definitely a cripple. So this is for you, C.