Me and my tinnitus.

I was intending to post regularly, but that hasn't happened.

I wanted to post some short stories, but that hasn't happened either.

Instead, I woke up with a high pitched tone in my head.

Doesn't seem like much. Just an irritation. Right?

Except for one thing: it didn't go away.

And I could no longer sleep.

At least, not much.

The damn noise was just too loud.

I'd get an hour, maybe two, per night. That was it. The rest was tossing and turning, wandering around, listening to music, and watching TV. Couldn't focus enough to read.

I certainly couldn't write.

I'd gotten tinnitus. It's often the result of damage to the tiny hairs deep inside our ears, but can also be caused by a viral infection, among other things.

Mine isn't in my ears.

It's in my head.

This new companion is merciless, unrelenting, and never goes away. It's like a combination of Jason and your least favorite in-law, and it's at you day and night.

At least Freddy only bothers you when you're dreaming.

I'm being hyperbolic, of course. It's really much more like Chinese water torture. Just the sonic version.

According to Wikipedia, there are no effective medications. No cure. No treatment. It affects up to fifteen per cent of people, but is only a significant problem for one or two per cent. For twenty-five per cent, it just gets louder as time goes on.

Peachy.

Sometimes, during the day, I can find an environment that's chaotic and noisy enough to mask the vile howl. There needs to be enough noise of different frequencies and different sources to be distracting, but not enough to cause hearing damage.

In one cafe, for a few moments, I even thought the tinnitus had gone away. Keep clinking those dishes!

But no such luck.

It's likely permanent.

That's the real kicker.

I saw an ENT (Ears, nose, throat) specialist in short order, by a stroke of luck and pulling a few connections.

Immediately went on an intensive treatment of steroids and anti-virals. These were intended to reduce inflammation inside my head, which might have been caused by a particularly bad cold.

That could be at root of it all.

Did no good.

But the sleep deprivation was rapidly becoming the bigger issue.

Even an existential issue.

I started to lose my sense of balance. I got regular, persistent headaches and felt sick to my stomach, but couldn't throw up. It was like feeling sick, but not being sick. A subtle distinction. I could still eat, and I began to over indulge, as a distraction.

I've always been moody but now I was self-parody.

Every time I shut my eyes the noise got louder

Action was required.

First discovery: over the counter sleeping pills are worthless.

Prescription sleeping pills got me a whopping 3 or 4 hours worth of shut eye per one-and-a-half pops. The side effect is that they make you feel dreadful, coat your thinking in cotton, and ruin your memory for the day. I'm not sure if you reach that sweet, deep REM sleep you need to really refresh.

So I had a dilemma: you can't go on forever on little or no sleep. Yet the only way I could sleep was with sleeping pills you aren't supposed to take for more than two weeks at a time.

Do the math.

Tinnitus had robbed me of rest. It was now slowly eroding my sanity. Eventually, the sleep deprivation could threaten my job, and ultimately my life.

By this point I was running multiple white noise generators during the night: fan, humidifier, heater, a white noise app on the phone, and an eight hour long Youtube video on my desktop computer.

It helped, but not much.

I still got little to no sleep.

Melatonin, valerian, gingko, and zinc pills were all added to my diet.

Got in to see a new GP and was put on a new medication: remonen.

At first, it didn't work at all. Just gave me wicked headaches and weird feelings in my head I'd never felt before.

At the end of the first week of taking it, however, I was getting more sleep.

In fact, this morning, I was woken up by the alarm clock.

That hasn't happened for some time, and it was totally AWESOME.

I didn't think I'd need alarm clocks again. Often I'd be looking at the clock, waiting for it to go off. Sometimes I'd shut it off a minute before. Sometimes I'd let it bleat for a bit.

Distraction. Always good. Even an alarm clock.

I'd say the remonen has likely saved my life, just as the American Tinnitus Association saved William Shatner's. If it continues to work, and it isn't a fluke, I'll be able to get some much needed rest.

I'm very hopeful.

As awful as the tinnitus is, I can manage, so long as I can sleep.

Believe me, you'll never realize how precious sleep is until you can't.

Exploring character: G.R.R. Martin and Game of Thrones

GoT is great at using character to drive story, and does so better than certain other currently hot cable shows (I'm looking at you, Walking Dead).

A great trick G.R.R. Martin uses: he takes inner struggles and turns them into living avatars. You can't see character's inner feelings in a TV show, so this is a great work around. And it's one way to tell who's going to be sticking around, and who's disposable fodder.

Take Stannis, for example. He's the definition of conflicted. Couldn't be more obvious if it were written on his forehead with indelible marker. He desires power, but is burdened by a conscience.

His advisors represent the battle going on inside his own noggin. The Red Lady tempts him with lust and power, while The Onion Knight appeals to his sense of duty and decency.

Desire versus conscience.

That conflict is what pulls Stannis into the third dimension. The Red Lady says his journey to the throne will require betraying everything he holds dear: family, friends, allies, honour. And as he chucks them under the wagon in his quest for the throne, he becomes more conflicted. Not something you see very often in a fantasy novel. Sauron is just a prick from the get-go. There's no nuance to be found, just flat-out evil. Which can be a lot of fun.

But Stannis? Will to Power compels him to commit horrible crimes, yet eats away at his soul. Not enough to stop, but perhaps enough to drive him mad. There have been mad kings before…

That's where The Onion Knight fits in. Stannis brings him in to save his soul.

Stannis is rigid and self-righteous to the point of being insufferable. If he becomes King, he'll spend all his time brooding over the horrors he committed to get there. Can you see Stannis frolicking about, holding mass orgies and letting go? Me either. It's gonna be Dour Kingdom Time, 24/7.

While Stannis barrels downward, Jamie stumbles up.

For him, the light is Brienne, who offers hope, honour, and redemption.

Holding him back is Cersei, the dark temptress, who's amoral, debauched, and utterly ruthless.

Their father Tywin is even worse, but his monstrous nature is shackled (you might even say it's harnessed) by his sense of duty. It's his only redeeming feature. He dictates like a demented Father Knows Best. Without his sense of duty, left to his own desires, he'd have had Tyrion throttled as a baby, just as his not-so-loving sister Cersei would have wanted.

Tyrion starts out as an amoral hedonist, a self-indulgent dwarf who desperately tries to stay out of the serious business of power. He fails, and his moral code is blown into sharp relief by waves of unwanted crises. Horrors and injustice compel him to act, again and again.

Shae represents turning inward: she's selfishness at the expense of the external world, urging Tyrion to run away with her for love.

Bron is mercenary indifference enabled by deadly ability. He can do what Tyrion cannot, but he has no sense of right and wrong. Bron's a weapon, one that could be used for good or ill. Self-interest is paramount.

Much as Tyrion tries to deny it, and run away from it, he's a moral actor, and so his reflections are not. Morality does not drive them: money, love, and revenge do. Base urges, untempered by conscience.

Danny, too, is on a downward journey, from Utopian clouds into dust coated realism. She liberates the slaves only to find her pet dragons eating hapless children. Revolts plague her rule. She can't choose between easy rights and wrongs, only between the greater and lesser evil. One way or another, ruling a kingdom sullies her. It's a humbling experience for a character driven by noble motives.

Honestly, the show is amazingly well done.

Chaos (Littlefinger) vs. Varys (order) is another awesome angle he's got going. Fire vs. Ice. So many layers.

Doing the Blogger do.

They say that if you want to be a writer these days, you need to have a blog. So voila! I am taking my first step along a new path.