Two weeks ago, I wrote about tinnitus - that maddening condition of hearing phantom ringing, hissing, or pulsating sounds that aren’t there. To my surprise, the reaction from readers was overwhelming. Emails and messages have been pouring in and I’m still working my way through them (apologies to anyone I haven’t replied to yet).

It turns out many of you, including people I’ve known for years, have been quietly battling tinnitus without ever speaking about it. Some have theories about the cause - standing too close to deafening speakers at gigs, car accidents, or the creeping effects of aging. Others have no clue. One day, the infernal noise just started and hasn’t stopped since….

Thousands of miles away, my drowsy wife was none too pleased to be woken up so early by my frantic messages. Sitting in my parent’s home in Mayo, I was shocked by the fiery images of hurricane-fuelled wildfires consuming vast swathes of neighbourhoods in Los Angeles county. My wife, on the other hand, took some persuading to open the curtains to our balcony, but she then was jolted fully awake, as a distant wall of orange flame illuminated the Glendale horizon. Black smoke filled the north-eastern sky as in a Hollywood post-apocalyptic blockbuster. Thankfully, that was as bad as it got for our location, as the winds eased and firefighters heroically battled the several blazes that had broken out over the week. After a day’s evacuation my wife was able to move back into our apartment. Many others were not so lucky, with at least 27 people killed, 12,000 structures and thousands of acres of habitat destroyed, alongside thousands of people displaced to date. When I arrived back to Los Angeles, the main threats facing the areas near the wildfires came from dangerous particulates in the air, as the winds carried all sorts of airborne contaminants from the charred remains of vegetation and buildings.

It was an afternoon in 2018 and I sat at my parents’ kitchen table working on my PhD thesis. I had a head cold, not in itself unusual as I seemed to always pick up any sinus illness going around, but especially that which blocked my inner ears. 

This day was a little different though and I wore headphones to listen to the soundtrack of my life as I battled my way through eighteenth-century Irish tax records, seeking some references to poteen distillers in Mayo. I then remember that a high-pitched monotone, which had been bothering me on and off that day, suddenly increased in volume. I tore off my headphones, thinking it was the music, and in a panic thought my ears would explode (I have always had a melodramatic imagination). After some minutes passed, the loudness eased and I relaxed a little — returning to my laptop but without my headphones. But this new sound remained in my head…