"BRAIN AND BRAIN, WHAT IS BRAIN?!"
So today I went up to the Royal Victoria Eye & Ear Hospital in Dublin for what will apparently be my last consult there. I sat down with Dr. Amy (one of the consultants handling the outpatient eye & ear clinic that was running today), and a young padawan-apprentice colleague who was observing, to talk to her about the relatively-crap hearing in my right ear (which works only about halfway as well as my left one) and the two MRIs that had recently been done to investigate this problem’s possible causes.
So, in order not to burden everybody with TMI, let me sum up. The scan of the inner ear revealed nothing structurally diagnostic to be going on in there, which was both a relief and (next thought) a bit mysterious. The brain scan that the hospital then sent me off to get last November was to confirm that there was nothing wrong with the way the auditory nerve—the cranial nerve that communicates with the brain on that side—was interfacing with the brain proper. Doctor Amy told me that they were looking for a relatively rare sign of swelling or hypertrophy of the nerve, which can cause hearing problems: but they found nothing.
So for the immediate issue that brought me to RVEEH, the result is: negative / unproven cause / WTF. Or, to sum up. “Go shopping for a hearing aid,” Dr. Amy said. “You’ll have to pay for it, but the HSE (Irish national health service) will assist you with a grant to cover some of the cost, after the fact.”
Then, though, something of more interest came up. “Over here, though,” Doctor Amy said, “we found this…”
It’s a 1.5cm meningioma in the left temporal lobe—a tumor of the meninges, one of the “containers” of tissue that hold the brain inside them.
Of all brain tumors—and I need to emphasize here, routinely very BENIGN brain tumors—this is by far the commonest. It is very very often found in older people, and specifically older women, when (frankly) looking for something else. It often turns up in people with a history of prolonged hormone usage (including the contraceptive pill, which I was on for many years), though the exact causal mechanism behind this connection is unclear.
Even from this not terribly tightly-focused imaging, it was apparently immediately clear to the radiologist reading the brain-scan MRI that the meningioma was NOT at this point dangerous. As more detailed diagnosis of such a problem isn’t in their specific specialty area, RVEEH will be forwarding this imaging to their colleagues at the neurology end of Beaumont Hospital in Dublin for further evaluation; and they (if they think it’s necessary) will pull me in for more imaging and an evaluation of what further action, if any, should be taken.
ETA, February 19, 2026: So I've heard back today from the senior consulting neurosurgeon at the Beaumont, who says simply that the meningioma "does not require neurosurgical intervention at this point" and suggested that I should have another MRI in a year; if there's any growth or other change in it then, they'll be happy to see me. (And since this is pretty much what I thought would happen, I'm just fine with that.)
Doctor Amy was careful to ask me whether I’d been having any symptoms that seemed to suggest a need for more immediate action (i.e. headaches, ringing ears, speech problems, etc.). But she was quick to confirm that this discovery, as far as she could tell, had nothing whatsoever to do with my hearing issues. So at least there’s that.
My new little friend (for whom I really have to find a suitable name, as Ursula Vernon / T. Kingfisher did with one of hers) would appear at the moment to be a stage 1 meningioma: typically very slow-growing, so much so that it’s often never even noticed during the lifetime of its owner (so to speak) due to the fact that it’s not in any way compromising the underlying brain tissue. It’s only when one of these babies starts growing more aggressively, and compressing or otherwise screwing around with the adjacent brain tissue, that trouble starts.
What you usually do with stage 1 meningiomas is “wait and see”. You check them out once or twice a year—more often if your consultant feels the need—with an eye to seeing if they’re behaving themselves, or starting to get cute. If one starts to get cute, you determine whether you can shrink it with radiation, or go in and dig it out, and then irradiate to make sure that no further cuteness ensues.
So that’s where we are at the moment (and as of mid-February '26). After I said farewell to Dr. Amy and her padawan, I took myself into town and had some bangers and mash for lunch at the Gin Palace, as they’re good for a nice comforting lunch when you need to settle your nerves a bit. (You can see here how my appetite was suffering. I was about halfway through it at this point. It was yummy.)
So briefly, to sum up: I am not freaked. Don’t any of you be, either! I do not feel like I’ve got a ticking time bomb in my head or anything. (I’m more concerned, frankly, about the abdominal MRI I have to schedule for next week, for an entirely different problem. Which will, alas, and unlike these, not be free.)
Meanwhile, if you want to assist me in defraying the immediate cost of the hearing aid (for which I now need to start shopping, oh whoopee), there are two ways to do this:
(a) Go buy some ebooks over here. The Whole-Store package is on sale again! Or:
(b) Nip over to my Ko-Fi and drop something in the kitty. Tag it CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW? or BRAIN AND BRAIN, WHAT IS BRAIN? just as you please, to let me know what you were concerned about. :)
And for those of you who *are* concerned: thanks. I'm thinking of you. ❤️
