What health ailments are you living with?

[Li Tan]

It sucks because you can see the other people having a conversation without a problem. Also, if the other people my table are having 2 conversations between the 4 of them it's even harder to follow.

When looking this up on Google I've seen it called "The Cocktail Party Effect" or the uncanny ability for people to selectively hear speakers in noisy crowds. My ability at this is a fail.

I have a hearing disability, as in it's been identified by doctors.
I was born with it, my left ear has only about 50% hearing and it's kind of tone deaf, like how things sound when you're under water. But most people who meet me don't know and don't guess until I tell them, because I can hold a conversation just fine.

But if I need to triangulate where a sound comes from, I'm screwed. If I need to pick a sound out from other noises, I have difficulty.
If I am walking on a noisy street talking to someone, I just instinctively stand with my good ear closer to them.

 

[Z A C K]

The human body is a crazy thing.

 

[Mr. Titan]

Nothing really serious, I'm only 25. Mostly just joint issues.

My knees are pretty bad, I feel lots of clicking and crunching in them from years of year-around sports and heavy weightlifting where I probably didn't use the proper form doing squats when I was younger. I also partially tore my left miniscus snow boarding a couple years ago, so that made things a lot worse. I think I did something to my right knee a couple months ago while moving, lots of crunching and popping.

My right shoulder is also a little messed up from a couple of injuries due ton10 years of pitching in baseball, but it doesn't bother me as much as it used to.

 

[BunzHoles]

When I was 19 I was told never to run or play sports again due to absolutely destroying my ankle on a few occasions. The inside of my ankle where it connects my foot to my leg is like an island of scar tissue. Short walks sometimes can cause it to flare up. Painful, and causes me to walk differently, which has a cascading effect on both of my feet. I've developed some sort of horrible pain in my toes somehow, likely related to me altering my gait when my ankle flares up.

When I was 28 I was beat really badly, including being kicked in the head repeatedly behind my left ear. Basically mugged. This left me with some permanent damage to my sinus cavity, as well as scarring that affects my brain. I suffer from what are called cluster headaches and the doctors think it's related:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluster_headache

he pain occurs on one side only (unilateral), around the eye (orbital), particularly above the eye (supraorbital), in the temple (temporal), in any combination. The pain of CH is remarkably greater than in other headache conditions, including severe migraine. The term "headache" does not adequately convey the severity of the condition; the disease may be the most painful condition known to medical science.

They are also known as "suicide headaches" because sufferers often take their own life.


Worst pain I could even attempt to describe, basically feels like my right eye is about to explode and that someone is stabbing me behind my eye. I've had months where I had the headaches a dozen times.. and months where I only had one.. but for the last 4-5 years I've had at least 1 of these headaches a month.

I can understand the nick name because at times, you really do just want to eat a bullet.

I tell my friends/family it's "migraines" because it's easier to describe, but they are much more serious.

Aside from the headaches I also experience a bit of virtigo from time to time due to crystals that formed in my sinus cavity after the beating.

 

[Videodrome]

Damn man I'd want to shoot those guys.