Am I the Only One?

Exactly, i didn’t mean to offend other people on this. Sorry about the one off comment i made…

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Something tells me it might be a mistake to attribute meaning to them (I know you weren’t serious).

I didn’t give them so much meaning but now I have a professional opinion about the whole thing. She advises no way to know for sure, of course, but she also says not to write these things off either - that they may be clues to my subconscious and to keep an open mind.

The WORDS OF THE DAY I really don’t like - sort of a rap rhythm thing - repeated ad nauseam (standard procedure I guess :roll_eyes:

“What you say… what you say… DOT DOT DOT”

If I were to attach any significance to today’s words - I’m not sure what meaning I could derive from seemingly nonsensical words; and since I rarely listen to music these days, rap or otherwise - no clues there.

I’m going to say you’re not alone. I’ve done some research and it’s possible to get radio signals, whether music or talk through hearing aids. It has something to do with electrical interference with hearing aids and cochlear implants.

I wear a hearing aid in one ear and have a cochlear implant in the other. Across the street from my house is one of those tall cell towers. There is a clock radio next to the bed. About a year ago, two years after I was implanted I started hearing some sort of talk radio shows, not one, but several different ones all talking at the same time, so there wasn’t any clarity in what was said. The stange thing is I hear this out of the ear with the cochlear implant without my sound processor on and the sound is the same like my hearing was before the hesring loss.i’ve heard the call letter from a station out of Milwaukee on several occasions.The signal comes in most clearly between 4 and 6 AM.

In the last couple of months, I’ve been hearing 80’s music. Now between midnight and 6 AM, 80’s music comes through the implant, not my other ear and the sound is natual, not the same as when I wear my sound processor. The most recognizable music, I hear I don’t think is a radio station. but possibly an internet broadcast. The reason I say this is because whoever is broadcasting will play a song from beggining to end one time, then at the end of the song, the song will repeat the last chorous of the song over and over again for about an hour. Then another song will come on and the same process happens again, the chorus repeating over and over again.

This person’s favorite song to play and run into the ground is Lionel Ritchie’s Hello. Over and over again. I didn’t hear the song this much in 1984 when it was released. This person has a cover version of someone else also singing the song and does the same thing over and over again. I’m really beginning to hate Hello. At some point, the song changes. Suddenly by Billy Ocean, when You Dream About Me by Night Ranger, Sole Survivor by Asia, Getting Closer to Your Heart by Paul McCartney and Wings (that one is from1979).a
Ong others.Suddenly, Sole Survivor, and When you Close Your Eyes are songs I love. Hearing them with the repeated choruses over and over again is getting old.

I didn’t have tinnitus before the hearing loss. This has only started over the last fouWhen it gets louder at 4 AM, it will wake me from a sound sleep. I really just want this to stop and/or take down the cell tower. So this does happen in some people and it’s annoying. I’ve also done the sound diversion, but it doesn’t eliminate the music or sound coming through the implant.

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@debbie_o

Does this issue stop when you put your processor on?

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Well, WOW is all I can say. I can not even imagine how frustrating that would be. The challenge is to find someone who could diagnose the cause and the solution. Could you try a different make/model of implant? Is there anything in your own house that may inadvertently amplify the signal - wifi booster, etc?

I totally empathize with you and the sleepless nights you must have. I had some odd interference stuff going on in my house that would cut out bluetooth streaming from the TV to my RIGHT aid only. Lasted MONTHS. I did figure out a workaround, but I actually thought my neighbor was jamming my signals somehow.

I sure hope you try things out to see if you can just plain ELIMINATE the issue. That’s what you really want. Keep us posted!

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OH! Moments later. I brought your very curious issue up with my hubs, the Tech Kahuna. He was also blown away that your imlant (or something) is receiving radio signals. He says to try and construct a pliable “Faraday cage” of metallic mesh that you could put over the implant to block the frequencies.

Maybe you could mold the cage, then somehow hold it in place over the implant with a knit skullcap? Just thinking out of the box here… Hubs says it should be easy to BLOCK that signal with a Faraday cage device, but how you fashion it and put it to use is the challenge.

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@Raudrive Rick, hmm, I never really noticed. At first, my answer would be no, but I don’t always wear my sound processor at home. Meaning I’m not sure. Right now, I don’t have it on, but it’s not late enough at night and right now all is quiet. It’s just strange, sometimes when it’s just talk, it’s like being in a crowd. All different voices at once, but it’s not loud. More like background noise. Sometimes the music will come in at a clear level, not loud and not quiet. Loudness would drive me crazy. It’s just like a radio when your turning the disl to tune it. It will come in and I can hear what the discussion or song is, then fadez, get louder, and fade again.

Let us know if putting the processor on stops or helps this issue.

On two occasions my right ear/processor went really loud and weird. It was noise I did not want to deal with. I ended up getting on the master volume and turned the volume way down until the loud sounds were tolerable. Both times it took about a week for this issue to calm down. Then I slowly over about a week raised the volume back up to normal on that ear.
My audiologist said it could have been sinus issues from allergies. Who knows. It was disturbing at the time.

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@1Bluejay Your husband’s idea doesn’t sound far fetched. Something between the implant and the frequency could block the sound. I still thinnking it might have something to do with the cell tower and how close to the house it is. If I didn’t live across the street or in the vicinity, this wouldn’t happen. Other sounds like the TV do work at blocking the sound.

I just wish whoever keeps playing the last part of a a music recording would stop. That’s when I try to shift my focus, like stream TV, a movie, a radio station, or something like You Tube through the other ear. That helps. Eventually it will either fade or stop (like the frequency is going in another direction. Like today, it’s been nothing…quiet. We did have rain this morning. Just weird and annoying.

@Raudrive It can also be just as annoying when a song I haven’t heard in a long time that I like comes through the implant and it’s faint, ou can’t control the volume to hear it better because you actually want to “listen.”

All I can say is if it is someone broadcasting an internet radio station that is insanely addicted to Hello by Lionel Richie, they stop.i’m so sick of hearing that song over and the last verse over and over again.:laughing:

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EDIT: Oops! I thought I was replying to someone else’s post here.

Do you ever hear any radio station call letters or ID to help find out WHERE this song is playing? It has to be coming from somewhere. Is there a fringe station that signs off every night with that song?

BTW, how did you get rid of tinnitus?

Check out Auditory Charles Bonnet Syndrome. “rare condition that presents with sensorineural hearing loss, which can result in musical hallucinations”. I have the Visual component of this syndrome. I had visual hallucinations that cropped up when my vision was getting worse. “When you lose your sight, your brain gets less information from your eyes than it’s used to. Your brain sometimes makes up for this by creating hallucinations… It’s not caused by a mental health problem or dementia.” I currently just see musical notes when reading. I was referred to an Visual Neurologist.

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@bluckie1
Thanks so much for your post.
A loved one had macular degeneration and lost sight. She used to speak so beautifully of scenes that she could only see.
Your explanation has helped me a lot.
DaveL

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She was a painter. She had received lessons from one of the Canadian Group of Seven. There was true beauty there.

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Did some research on this and came up with the same thing of hearing hallucinations. I have an appointment at thebend ofbthe month with a specialist in otology, neurotology . He does cochlear implants and balance issues to name afew of the conditions he specializes in. The doctor that did my implant moved back to his wife’s native country in 2022. I’ve started having some balance issues before the SSHD in 2019. Was checked in 2022, but nothing abnormal, however it’s been getting worse. I will ask him about the hearing music.

For those that have asked, yes it does happen with my sound processor on as well as off. I’m going to add that I have vision loss in my eye, the same side as the ear that had the SSHD incident. The loss is due to proliferative diabetic retinopathy and happened in 1997. So neurologically, it’s not related to the hearing loss
in the ear. No visual hallucinations in eyes.

Once again, there is a cell tower behind the house across the street from me, so I don’t know it that plays a part in this. At home, I have heard commercials and some call letters and a location, but that hasn’t helped.

Recently I was in a doctor’s office in a room and i I just heard a song that repeated, not in entirety, but from the middle to the end over and over. No overhead music in the office. I had my sound processor on.

Finally, no more Hello by Lionel RitchieSuddenly by Billy Ocean. The music has moved on to If This Is It by Huey Lewis, Year of the Cat by Al Stewart and some other occasional songs like If You Love Me Let Me Know by Olivia Newton John, Don’t Stop Believing By Journey, and When You Close Your Eyes by Night Ranger. Also some choruses tepeating that I’ve never heard before. Very strange, only started about 6 months ago, been implanted 3 1/2 years. It’s not like it’s melody playing in my head, it’s the actual song. At lear it’s not 24 hours a day. Weird!

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@d_Wooluf That’s the other term I was trying to think of, ear worms. Ghat wasin my research too. Now this happens in people with hearing loss. It’s nothing to go running to the doctor with. It’s not going to harm you, it’s just plain annoying.

It’s not a neurologist, it’s a neurotologist. There’s nothing wrong with your head, you’re not mentally ill. I also have total hearing loss in my right ear and have a cochlear implant. These are old songs, but the music is the original song by the original artist, they aren’t melodies or covers, thus the thought that it sounds like a radio ststion.

I wouldn’t think music hallucination be the real song, but a cover or just the melody. Why would it occur so clearly 4 years after implant surgery? It’s not happening on the hearing aid, just the implanted side.It’s just a phenomenon I’m curious about. Is it radio waves or a condition?

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It’s interesting that you brought this up. I feel like it is not super unusual. I experience something similar, and many people that I have spoken to have described their own version of it.

I call my version “brain radio”.

When my mind is idle, I hear music. Sometimes it is literally like listening to the radio (minus the disc jockey’s voice and commercials). I will hear a song in its entirety, a brief pause, and then a completely different song. This can go on all day, fading away when I am focused on a task, and returning when I’m not. Other times it will be a snippet of a song, or a single song on repeat for a period of time.

When it happens, I hear lyrics, instruments, etc - just as though the sound was coming from an external source.

In all cases, the songs seem to be ones that are familiar to me, though they are often ones that I could not possibly have heard (on the radio, or a movie soundtrack, for example) in decades.

At this exact moment, the song is “Love is Alive” by Gary Wright, from his 1975 album “The Dream Weaver”.

I have had this for as much of my adult life as I can remember. My wife, who is not hearing impaired, has a similar experience. Sometimes I will hear her call out from another room, and it will be something like “Dust in the Wind!!”, and I will reply with “Dream Police!” For both of us, it is predominately songs that are from our preferred era and genres - mostly pop music from the 1960s through the early 2000s.

Very occasionally, it will be a song that I know, but was never “popular music”. In one case recently it was a kind of nonsense song that my grandmother used to sing when I was very little, called “Mairzy Doats” (apparently published in 1943, more than 20 years before I was born). There’s no way I have heard that externally for at least 50 years.

It doesn’t really bother me, I just see it as one of the oddities that makes me, me.

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