Speaker 1: Pushkin. I had just turned twenty, like a month earlier,
Speaker 1: and I woke up one morning to this sound that
Speaker 1: was it sounded like a fire alarm, Like if you
Speaker 1: if you woke up to a fire alarm, you would
Speaker 1: be in a state of emergency. And that's that's what
Speaker 1: it felt like. And then it took me a few
Speaker 1: seconds to realize that the sound actually wasn't coming from
Speaker 1: anywhere it was it was coming from inside my own head.
Speaker 1: That was seven years ago, and every day since then,
Speaker 1: Ramsey Cobaz has continued to hear that same persistent sound
Speaker 1: in his head. If you're inside and you live on
Speaker 1: a busy street and there's a truck backing up, the
Speaker 1: beeping sound that it makes to kind of let pedestrians
Speaker 1: know it's it's sort of that volume, but it's not
Speaker 1: like a punctuated beeping. It's it's a persistent It was
Speaker 1: literally the only sound just completely dominating my headspace. This
Speaker 1: change Ramsey experienced, it was something doctors were able to
Speaker 1: name and describe. They said it was tenitis with sudden
Speaker 1: hearing loss in his left ear, but they couldn't explain
Speaker 1: why it happened to Ramsey, So he went searching for
Speaker 1: his own answer. I'm Maya Shunker and this is a
Speaker 1: slight change of plans, a show that dives deep into
Speaker 1: the world of change and hopefully gets us to think
Speaker 1: differently about change in our own lives. Ramsey Kabaz remembers
Speaker 1: the exact moment this happened. He was a sophomore in college.
Speaker 1: It was Thursday, October sixteenth, twenty fourteen, a little after
Speaker 1: nine am, when he woke up to a high pitched
Speaker 1: ringing in his left ear. I remember running to the
Speaker 1: bathroom and like literally looking inside of my ear and
Speaker 1: feeling inside of my ear and trying to figure out
Speaker 1: like what had happened, Like did I fall asleep with
Speaker 1: my headphone's in? Is there something inside of my ear?
Speaker 1: And obviously there wasn't, and I was really freaked out.
Speaker 1: I called my mom and I was like, hey, I
Speaker 1: think something's really wrong because I woke up with this
Speaker 1: ringing in my ear and now I'm feeling really off balance,
Speaker 1: and I'm talking to my mom on the phone and she's,
Speaker 1: you know, asking me if I want to, you know,
Speaker 1: for her to come pick me up and take me
Speaker 1: to you know, the doc or something. And I switched
Speaker 1: hands at some point, you know, I was I was
Speaker 1: holding the phone with my right hand and I switched
Speaker 1: over to my left hand and the call dropped, and
Speaker 1: I was really confused and I was like hello, like
Speaker 1: you there, and there was no sound, and so then
Speaker 1: I eventually I switched hands again and she was back
Speaker 1: and the call was back, and I remember putting it
Speaker 1: together that oh my god, I can't hear anything out
Speaker 1: of my left ear. I think this is it's not
Speaker 1: the call dropping, it's it's my ear isn't working. So
Speaker 1: I asked my mom to say the alphabet. She's confused,
Speaker 1: but she's like, okay, um ABCD, And I switched over
Speaker 1: to my left ear and there's nothing. And then I
Speaker 1: switched back over to my right ear and L M
Speaker 1: N O P and I you know, at that point,
Speaker 1: I was like, I really think that I need to go,
Speaker 1: you know, go to the doctor because something's something's not
Speaker 1: right here. And did this doctor know immediately what was
Speaker 1: going on? So this is kind of where where I
Speaker 1: started to get a little frustrated, because you know, he
Speaker 1: was telling me, yeah, you have you have sudden sudden
Speaker 1: hearing loss. I was not in a good mood, as
Speaker 1: you can imagine. I remember saying to him, yeah, I know,
Speaker 1: I know that, Like it's it's pretty clear to me
Speaker 1: that I have suddenly lost my hearing. Could you tell me? Why?
Speaker 1: Could you tell me what happened? The best they can
Speaker 1: do is just call the condition what the symptom is.
Speaker 1: And I remember he listed off to me a bunch
Speaker 1: of possible reasons, and it ranged from from, you know,
Speaker 1: I had a concussion the previous year, so that was
Speaker 1: it could have been a residual side effect of my concussion.
Speaker 1: It could have been something related to my jaw. It
Speaker 1: could have been an autoimmune reaction to some you know,
Speaker 1: some virus. And then the one that he that he
Speaker 1: told me at the end that really freaked me out was,
Speaker 1: you know, because you're so young for something like this
Speaker 1: to happen, it's possible that you have like a brain tumor.
Speaker 1: And I remember hearing that and thinking, oh my god,
Speaker 1: like you know, this is this is really fucking scary.
Speaker 1: Do you mind just describing what it was like lying
Speaker 1: in your bed that night? I think, just fear. You know,
Speaker 1: It's it's like if somebody, when somebody tells you not
Speaker 1: to think about elephants, you know, and then all you
Speaker 1: can think about is elephants having the persistent tone, that
Speaker 1: ringing just so loud, and no other sound in that
Speaker 1: in that ear just like filling my head with fear.
Speaker 1: And the fear was was just like literal it was
Speaker 1: literalized by by this sound that was not going away.
Speaker 1: And I was more or less told by the doctors
Speaker 1: that it may never go away, that that sound may
Speaker 1: just stay with me forever. If you try to go
Speaker 1: to sleep with that sound playing in your room, that's
Speaker 1: how difficult it was for me to go to sleep
Speaker 1: that first night. So you wake up the next morning
Speaker 1: and that ringing is still in your head. Did it
Speaker 1: take your conscious brain just a moment or two to
Speaker 1: register this new reality. Yeah. I remember waking up and
Speaker 1: realizing or thinking and worrying that the only the only
Speaker 1: silence I would ever get for the rest of my
Speaker 1: life would be when I was asleep, Like there was
Speaker 1: no there was no such thing as silence anymore. And
Speaker 1: I what I remember about waking up before this happened
Speaker 1: to me, was you know that feeling of like you
Speaker 1: wake up and it's just quiet. It was like waking
Speaker 1: up to an alarm. Wow, you had a brain scan
Speaker 1: to figure out whether or not you had this tumor
Speaker 1: in your brain. I went in for the MRI, and
Speaker 1: if anyone's ever gotten an MRI m on you know
Speaker 1: on their head before you go into this little like
Speaker 1: it feels like a coffin almost, or like a tanning bed,
Speaker 1: and you like slide in and there's a there's a
Speaker 1: loud sort of whirring sound. But they gave me headphones
Speaker 1: and they were like, hey, like, what kind of music
Speaker 1: do you like? We can play whatever you whatever you
Speaker 1: want on these headphones. And I was like, all right, well,
Speaker 1: I like Bob Dylan, Can you play some Bob Dylan.
Speaker 1: I think they had Pandora at that point at the hospital,
Speaker 1: so they gave me. They put the headphones in and
Speaker 1: I think the first song was like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe like a rolling stone or something. And then the
Speaker 1: Pandora formula gave me Simon and Garfuncles the sound of silence.
Speaker 1: So I'm in this MRI machine, you know, like weeping
Speaker 1: with the sound of silence playing and this loud whirring
Speaker 1: of the machine and the and the loud ringing in
Speaker 1: my ear, and in retrospect it's like dark comedy you know,
Speaker 1: just not knowing like what kind of information I was
Speaker 1: going to get back from from this test um. And luckily,
Speaker 1: you know, thank god, I did not have I did
Speaker 1: not have a brain tumor. I think that I was
Speaker 1: not really reassured by the fact that I didn't have
Speaker 1: a brain tumor. I was. I was grateful, of course,
Speaker 1: but it didn't bring me the kind of peace that
Speaker 1: I that I think it maybe should have or or
Speaker 1: or could have. You know, one thing that's so interesting
Speaker 1: about tonitis, so maddening about tonitis is that, unlike many
Speaker 1: other challenges or afflictions we face in life, you can't
Speaker 1: get a respite from it, right, You can't just take
Speaker 1: a minute away. It was really hard. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think I have the language now to describe it as
Speaker 1: um as like a mental health crisis, you know. I
Speaker 1: think I was really going through some some depression at
Speaker 1: that time, and and a lot of anxiety because, like
Speaker 1: you said, there's no there's no rest, you know, there's
Speaker 1: no there's no relaxing. And it made me realize that
Speaker 1: like having some quiet is really important. Having a chance
Speaker 1: to like leave class and just kind of sit on
Speaker 1: a bench and like not think about anything is really important,
Speaker 1: and I didn't know how to how to pause anymore,
Speaker 1: and so I think that that led to a lot
Speaker 1: of anxiety. And then there was sort of this deeper
Speaker 1: psychological thing that happened, which which is this fear of
Speaker 1: my body just failing and things just just failing for
Speaker 1: no reason. The depression part of it, or the you know,
Speaker 1: the hopelessness part of it was more of like an
Speaker 1: analytical thing happening in my brain where I was I
Speaker 1: sort of did some transitive property calculation where I was like, well,
Speaker 1: like if this, if I woke up one day and
Speaker 1: this happened, then like what could happen tomorrow? You know?
Speaker 1: And that led to a lot of a lot of
Speaker 1: fear and a lot of you know, some depression. Which
Speaker 1: thing was troubling you more? Was it the physiological sensation
Speaker 1: of having this constant bringing in your ear or was
Speaker 1: it this new realization about your own fragility and vulnerability
Speaker 1: and the fact that your body could just fail you
Speaker 1: at any moment in time. Well, to me, they were related,
Speaker 1: because the physiological experience of being distracted and being you know,
Speaker 1: not having rest was it was it was acting as
Speaker 1: a reminder of the existential stuff, the existential questioning, and
Speaker 1: you know, those big sort of difficult, morbid questions, like
Speaker 1: we're just as persistent as the sound, if that makes sense,
Speaker 1: Because to me, like not having the brain tumor, you know,
Speaker 1: I think I was trying to tell myself that, like, Okay,
Speaker 1: well the worst didn't happen here, you know, like things
Speaker 1: aren't that different. You know, it could have been. It
Speaker 1: could have been so much more different if chance had
Speaker 1: sort of broken in a different way. And so I
Speaker 1: think I was not being honest with myself about the
Speaker 1: fact that, like the condition that I was experiencing was
Speaker 1: really dramatic. We'll be right back with a slight change
Speaker 1: of plants. Ramsay Cobaz could not find a medical explanation
Speaker 1: for his tenitis, even after speaking with over a half
Speaker 1: dozen doctors about it. He tried to find ways to
Speaker 1: cope with it, that nothing was working, and he continued
Speaker 1: to feel despondent. One night, about a month after this
Speaker 1: all began, he was out with his girlfriend and they
Speaker 1: noticed that an old movie called Hannah and Her Sisters
Speaker 1: was playing that night at the local theater. Neither of
Speaker 1: them had seen it, so they bought two tickets and
Speaker 1: as a warning, this next section contains a brief mention
Speaker 1: of suicide. And it's a movie where basically there's there's
Speaker 1: one subplot where a character who's like a hypochondriac wakes
Speaker 1: up with like a ringing or buzzing in his ear
Speaker 1: and he kind of freaks out, goes to the doctor,
Speaker 1: and the doctor tells him that he might have a
Speaker 1: brain tumor, and then he is sent down this like
Speaker 1: existential spiral. And I'm sitting there watching this movie, like,
Speaker 1: you know, like nudging my girlfriend like can you believe this?
Speaker 1: Like this is pretty fucking weird that like this is
Speaker 1: happening sort of on the margins of this movie, Like
Speaker 1: this story is exactly what I've been going through this
Speaker 1: past few weeks. And then he's basically suicidal in his
Speaker 1: apartment and he has a gun and he's like the
Speaker 1: gun misfires and he kind of freaks out, and so
Speaker 1: he leaves his apartment and is walking around New York
Speaker 1: City and he wanders into a movie theater and he
Speaker 1: sits down and it's like an old gradual Marx movie
Speaker 1: that is really funny and makes him laugh. He says
Speaker 1: that basically the fact of walking into this movie theater
Speaker 1: and feeling comforted by movies was sort of restorative of
Speaker 1: his spiritual crisis. And so I'm sitting there in the theater,
Speaker 1: like looking at this character looking up at a screen,
Speaker 1: basically recounting exactly what I was experiencing. You know, I
Speaker 1: loved movies. I was studying movies at that time, like
Speaker 1: I wanted to be a director and a writer. It
Speaker 1: felt meaningful, and I think that that's that's one thing
Speaker 1: that I really clinged onto. So I was feeling hope
Speaker 1: because the movie reflected my experience in a way that
Speaker 1: felt so unlikely that it must mean something. You know,
Speaker 1: it is such a common feature of human psychology to
Speaker 1: want to create narratives and stories for ourselves to try
Speaker 1: to make sense of our lives. And this tendency, this
Speaker 1: aspect of human nature we're always trying to build stories
Speaker 1: is one of the reasons why we are so resilient. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, well, there's that famous jendating quote we tell
Speaker 1: ourselves stories in order to live. I think it's true.
Speaker 1: It's like we all have this narrative about ourselves. I
Speaker 1: think when something unexpected happens for a reason that doesn't
Speaker 1: track with what you've been telling yourself about yourself. You
Speaker 1: need to fit it into your story somehow. I'm wondering
Speaker 1: what impact the tenitis had on your relationships. The way
Speaker 1: that I was coping with it socially was to kind
Speaker 1: of just withdraw, I think for the practical reasons of
Speaker 1: of not really being willing or able to go to
Speaker 1: like loud spaces like parties and concerts, but then also
Speaker 1: for the psychological reasons of just feeling not super fun,
Speaker 1: not super fun to be around, Like I wasn't I
Speaker 1: wasn't making jokes, I wasn't a great hang at that time,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. I remember I was living
Speaker 1: in a house off campus, and I was I was
Speaker 1: sitting on the porch of the house, which was like
Speaker 1: a little bit elevated above the sidewalk, and um, and
Speaker 1: I was it was dark, and I could hear some
Speaker 1: people kind of walking on the sidewalk below, and I
Speaker 1: heard I heard someone say my name. I heard someone
Speaker 1: say like, oh, like, doesn't Ramsey live in this house?
Speaker 1: And then I heard a second voice say yeah, fuck
Speaker 1: that guy. And I was just like I was like,
Speaker 1: oh shit, Like like do what should I say? Like
Speaker 1: should I make myself known, like what do I do here?
Speaker 1: And I realized I kind of like took a peek,
Speaker 1: and I realized that the person who said that was
Speaker 1: was one of my closest friends from freshman year. And
Speaker 1: I can hear I can hear the guy saying like, yeah,
Speaker 1: like I don't know what happened to that guy, Like
Speaker 1: he he never wants to hang out, like I haven't
Speaker 1: seen him in so long, Like he's he was clearly
Speaker 1: hurt that, like I had kind of fallen off the map,
Speaker 1: and man like that was a really important signal to
Speaker 1: me that like my inability to communicate about this experience
Speaker 1: honestly with people and my tendency to just withdraw instead
Speaker 1: of offering some kind of an explanation was actually like,
Speaker 1: you know, people were experiencing that in a way that
Speaker 1: was absolutely not what I intended I had. I had
Speaker 1: sort of let some some people down. I think like
Speaker 1: a big turning point for you. The realization that you know,
Speaker 1: I'm I don't know how to communicate about this to others,
Speaker 1: and I think, as you mentioned, I don't know even
Speaker 1: how to communicate this to myself. Was that a strong
Speaker 1: source of motivation for you to really aggressively confront this
Speaker 1: problem and tackle it on an emotional level. Yes, it
Speaker 1: was a bit of a turning point where I just
Speaker 1: became more aware that, like, I can't just deal with
Speaker 1: this as something that like was a dodged bullet just
Speaker 1: because I didn't have a brain tumor. Like, this was
Speaker 1: still a big deal and very formative and very consequential
Speaker 1: to my development. And I need to just like say
Speaker 1: that to people when I when they get to know me,
Speaker 1: because it's an important factor in my story. I'm curious Ramsey,
Speaker 1: whether finally acknowledging what a big deal this was in
Speaker 1: some way helped you better manage the physiological experience of
Speaker 1: the tonitis. I think there was two distinct recoveries. There
Speaker 1: was my psychological sort of reasoning of the experience and
Speaker 1: becoming more honest with myself and others about it. And
Speaker 1: then there was simultaneously a physiological thing that happened that
Speaker 1: I don't know how to explain, where my brain just
Speaker 1: stopped perceiving it the way that it did initially. I'm
Speaker 1: really interested in how my brain was able to over
Speaker 1: time learn how to not be alarmed by it anymore.
Speaker 1: I know, in the case of anxiety research that if
Speaker 1: you find ways to feel less threatened by an anxious thought,
Speaker 1: it really does lose power over you and can become
Speaker 1: something you notice less. Does this mirror your experience with tonitis?
Speaker 1: When I think about the sound, I used to think
Speaker 1: about it as like as as like some kind of
Speaker 1: like a like a conscious enemy, if that makes sense,
Speaker 1: like something that was that I was fighting, you know.
Speaker 1: And now when I hear it, like right now, I
Speaker 1: can just kind of like stop for a second and
Speaker 1: be like, yet, there it is so there. I don't
Speaker 1: think of it as an enemy. I literally just think
Speaker 1: of it like, you know, it's my hand, or like
Speaker 1: it's my finger, you know, like it's just a part
Speaker 1: of my physical self. It's just there. You know. Sometimes
Speaker 1: I'm a little like like I wish this could just
Speaker 1: go away. But other times I'm just like, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: there and doesn't bother me. It's not I'm not fighting it,
Speaker 1: you know. And I think I remember the first day
Speaker 1: that I realized that I hadn't thought about it the
Speaker 1: previous day where I woke up, I was like eating
Speaker 1: breakfast or something, and then I like remembered it. It
Speaker 1: was there like it always is, and I heard it,
Speaker 1: and I remember thinking to myself, like, holy shit, I
Speaker 1: don't think. I don't think I thought about this yesterday.
Speaker 1: Like I don't think I perceived this sound all day yesterday.
Speaker 1: I don't remember pausing and getting frustrated. I don't remember
Speaker 1: thinking about it, hearing it like turning on a fan
Speaker 1: to mask it. I think I just went the whole
Speaker 1: day yesterday the way that I would have if I
Speaker 1: didn't have this ring in my ear, And that was
Speaker 1: inexplicable to me and like so comforting to know that,
Speaker 1: like it didn't need to go away in order for
Speaker 1: me to not perceive it. When you put different labels
Speaker 1: on an anxious thought, right as not being the enemy,
Speaker 1: like you know, it's equivalent of visualizing wanting to like
Speaker 1: smash the anxious thought with a baseball bat, versus imagining
Speaker 1: that's the thing in the sky just floating by you
Speaker 1: and you notice it and you acknowledge it and you
Speaker 1: let it pass, and it's the same thought in the
Speaker 1: same way. That's the same sound for you, right, but
Speaker 1: it just doesn't have the same power over your anxious
Speaker 1: brain as it did before. Yeah, yeah, actually I've never
Speaker 1: thought this before, but I've never put this together. But
Speaker 1: I think of it as quiet now, I guess if
Speaker 1: that makes sense, like it is it is my version
Speaker 1: of quiet when I can't hear anything else but it.
Speaker 1: That's just sort of my like my meditation space. That's
Speaker 1: what it feels like to me. If I had asked
Speaker 1: twenty year old Ramsey, how's this whole tonightist thing going
Speaker 1: to play out for you? What's required in order for
Speaker 1: you to be okay with this? What do you think
Speaker 1: he would have said? I think I would have had
Speaker 1: like a determination about me to resolve it medically, because
Speaker 1: I remember at that time I went to no joke.
Speaker 1: I think I went to like eight or nine doctors,
Speaker 1: and the fact that I didn't get an explanation that
Speaker 1: was satisfying to me was so frustrating for so long that, like,
Speaker 1: I think I just wanted to continue to track that down.
Speaker 1: I think I would have probably told you, like, I'm
Speaker 1: going to figure out what happened, and I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 1: gonna solve it. I'm gonna get my I'm gonna get
Speaker 1: my silence. Because even if it doesn't mean that you're
Speaker 1: going to get what you want, sometimes an answer feels
Speaker 1: like it's like fool's gold, but like it feels like
Speaker 1: it might make a difference even even when it won't.
Speaker 1: But obviously I would have been wrong. Like I can't
Speaker 1: even be bothered to read like a research paper that
Speaker 1: my like med school friend sends me. Now about this,
Speaker 1: Like I it's it's not only that I'm not actively
Speaker 1: pursuing an answer or or a resolution, it's that I'm
Speaker 1: like indifferent to it. Hey, thanks for listening. Join me
Speaker 1: next week when I chat with Grammy winning singer songwriter
Speaker 1: Kasey Musgraves. We talk about her upcoming album and the
Speaker 1: impact A psychedelic Trip has had on her creative process.
Speaker 1: Literally the day after my experience, I mean, it was
Speaker 1: like the neurons were just firing off, like insane imagery perspective.
Speaker 1: I mean there was a massive explosion of creativity ideas.
Speaker 1: The whole concept for my new album that I've been writing,
Speaker 1: A slight change of Plans is created an executive produced
Speaker 1: by me Maya Shunker. Big thanks to everyone at Pushkin Industries,
Speaker 1: including our producer Mola Board, associate producers David Jaw and
Speaker 1: Julia Goodman, executive producers Mia Lavelle and Justine Lange, senior
Speaker 1: editor Jen Guera, and sound design and mixed engineers Ben
Speaker 1: Holliday and Jason Gambrel. Thanks also to Louise Gara who
Speaker 1: wrote our theme song, and Ginger Smith who helped arrange
Speaker 1: the vocals, incidental music from Epidemic Sound, and of course
Speaker 1: a very special thanks to Jimmy Lee. You can follow
Speaker 1: a slight change of plans on Instagram at doctor Maya Shunker.
Speaker 1: Do you visualize it at all? Though? Like, does it
Speaker 1: have a shape or a form? So he's been curious
Speaker 1: about up. This is going to be kind of weird.
Speaker 1: I've never answered this question before. It feels like a
Speaker 1: shooting star, kind of like there's some kind of like
Speaker 1: a like a fluttery, sparkly shimmer around the very direct, fast,
Speaker 1: straight line, if that makes sense. That's a cool question.
Speaker 1: I've literally never I've never said that or thought that
Speaker 1: out loud, but like that's pretty much what it feels like. Wow,
Speaker 1: shooting star. Yeah, just like straight, bright, thin and like
Speaker 1: you notice it. It's just a shooting star in my ear.
Speaker 1: Everyone wants a shooting star in their ear.