Chapter 29
One year ago, my right ear was rendered partially useless, the beginning of Idiopathic Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss.
I wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary, just sitting on my bed in a hotel room, strumming, playing, trying to come down after a festival appearance.
My guitar didn't sound right, and I tried to tune it like I usually did, by ear. Thinking someone had damaged my fucking favorite guitar in the world, I pulled out my tuning kit and realized it wasn't the guitar.
It was me.
I chalked it up to the late hour, the concert that night, too much whiskey and smoke, and went to bed.
When I woke up, my right ear was buzzing furiously. I knew all about tinnitus, of course, had suffered it briefly from time to time in both ears. Job hazard. Price you pay. I didn't hear as well as a fucking three-year-old, but hey, who the fuck cared?
I jumped up out of bed hoping to clear it and immediately fell back down, dizzy.
Stayed like that for an hour until it calmed down enough so I could get up, get some aspirin. Get my whiskey.
That episode had been the worst yet.
It was the first time I was fucking scared.
I told Carlisle I needed to run an errand and got a cab straight to an emergency room. They gave me steroids and said hopefully it would clear up soon. If I was lucky, my right ear would regain most of the hearing I had left in two weeks.
I wasn't lucky.
Even though the roaring tinnitus finally receded to a tolerable level after a few weeks, no real hearing came back.
I, the great Edward Cullen, the man who lived and would ultimately die for his music, was going deaf.
When we finished the last album, I searched for the best fucking place to fix me. So off I flew to the Mayo Clinic Division of Audiology in Rochester, Minnesota.
Everyone thought I was naked and stoned in Thailand for two weeks.
I let 'em think it.