What?

So they gave me an MRI.

Because they only wanted to zap my head, I only had to go in up to my elbows.

It wasn't bad, really. They played the Classic Rawk station from SiriusXM -- first song up, "Starship Trooper" by Yes, which kind of fit the sci-fi MRI feel. And I had a little mirror attached to my face that reflected toward my feet, so I could see the guy at the control panel. It gave me the illusion of looking straight ahead and to the outside, so it wasn't so much like being buried alive as it was like being in a rocket tube.

But I did think about a comic book I read in my misspent youth, an issue of World's Finest where Batman is buried alive. I knew if he was stuffed in an MRI machine he'd find a way out of that too.

The MRI was not the first stop in my journey, of course. You don't just show up at the radiologist and say, "I'm feeling a bit peakish, old boy; think you could slap me in your magnetic whatsis and give it a spin?" No, first you go to the GP, who sends you to the specialist, who sends you to get your head examined.

What? Why did this happen? Speak up, sonny!

One day I was sitting on the porch and I noticed that everything sounded a little weird -- tinny, actually. Human voices were sounding like robots. So either everyone on earth had been kidnapped and replaced by robot duplicates, or something was off with my hearing. I decided that I'd give y'all the benefit of the doubt and go to the doctor. I've had ear infections as an adult, and that nasty wax buildup isn't just for old-fashioned floors, and I had read that the tinny sound can be caused by such things. If something is blocking one ear, the sound is moving slower through the obstruction than it does through the clear ear, causing the sound effect.

Or, option B.

My wife, who thinks I don't listen well as it is, nudged me to get to the doctor, so I did. And he found nothing. He gave it the old college try, zapping my ear with water, but told me he didn't think it would help. Off to the ENT!

First at the ENT: Into the booth for a test.

The booth controls.

As I have never been on any kind of game show, I have not been in a soundproof booth since the standard hearing tests of childhood. But the hearing tests have not changed much. Press the button when you hear a beep. Repeat these words as I say them. Etc. Must be boring for the tester to have to run down the same litany all day, but I found everyone at the clinic cheerful and friendly. And the results showed that I had lost a bit of hearing range in one ear, not caused by obstruction. I asked the doctor running the test, what else could it be if not caused by obstruction? She told me that was an interesting question.

Every step of the way people asked me what I did for a living. Hearing loss at my age is often caused by exposure to loud noises, like sirens or heavy machinery or jet engines. I told them I was an editor and worked from home, and the the only loud noise I generally heard all day was baby dog Nipper threatening to tear the UPS man a new one. No one asked me if I had ever gone to see KISS (yes, once) or been to L'Amour in Brooklyn (yes, once). I would have thought those would be the first questions they'd ask. ("Have you ever seen a concert by KISS?" "Yes, many years ago." "Well, there's your problem.")

The hearing doc thought it could be a number of things, so I went sent home with several prescriptions: a blood test for Lyme disease (the second one I had this year), rheumatoid arthritis, and other diseases that can cause hearing loss; an MRI for my head to see if it held anything (hyuk hyuk); and prednisone. Apparently prednisone has been shown to be useful for idiopathic hearing loss, and as I'm the idiopath that had it, they gave me the pills.

I'd never had prednisone before, but people warned me about oral steroids. It was a ten-day series that started with a massive dose and trended down. So the morning after the visit to the ENT I took the massive dose, expecting to collapse and freak out. I felt fine. No problem. Until six hours later in the supermarket, when I had to clutch the cart to keep myself from collapsing on the floor. It's a nice clean supermarket, but still. People talk.

Mostly the drug made me jumpy and light-headed, but as the doses diminished so did the side-effects. Unfortunately, it didn't magically fix my hearing. So I waited for my next appointment with the ear doc, and in the meanwhile got the blood test and the MRI. And tried not to look online. Because if you look online, you find out that it could be something benign and rarely fatal but hard to treat, like acoustic neuroma. Or, you find out it could be a malign tumor that's fixin' to kill you.

Tomorrow: The test results arrive... or do they? And: Yogi! Batman escapes! Return to the soundproof room! Doctors' homework! Things that can happen to your ear! Driving under the influence! Kingsley Amis and James Bond! And more!