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∑ 1 Learning to Listen All Over Again Michael Pierschalla, an extremely smart, sensitive individual, grew up in the small central Wisconsin city of Wausau. In the autumn of 1974, at the age of 19, he moved 140 miles south to attend the University of Wisconsin at Madison, not knowing exactly what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. Like a lot of disa√ected young people during the Vietnam War era, Pierschalla had an unfocused thirst for knowledge, which led him to study philosophy and spend time with his friends drinking co√ee, smoking cigarettes, and playing his guitar while trying to figure it all out. About six months into his freshman year, he decided he wasn’t ready for college. He felt he was wasting both his time and his parents’ money, so he packed his bags and returned to Wausau, where he moved into the basement of his parents’ home and took on odd jobs. The focus of his life was his evenings spent at the BonTon Café with those friends who had not yet left town, attempting to solve the world’s problems. ‘‘There were a bunch of us just sort of waiting for our calling. This was pretty much how the days passed, one after the other,’’ said Pierschalla. He spent the rest of his time involved with his first love, music. Headset on, and guitar in hand, he taught himself to read music and dreamed of becoming a world-famous guitarist. ‘‘My very earliest memories are essentially sound-oriented ones. Music was really something that moved me very deeply,’’ he said. Learning to Listen All Over Again 9 Then, in early August—on a Thursday, to be precise—Pierschalla’s life started to unravel. ‘‘I remember staying out very late the night before. I then walked a couple of miles back to my folks’ house, and went to sleep. I have a recollection of waking up in the middle of the night and turning over in bed and feeling a little bit of an odd sensation, but I’m not sure just what it was. When I did wake up in the morning a little bit on the late side, I got up out of bed and stumbled and fell over.’’ He also heard a ringing in his right ear. No one else was home at the time, so he looked up the address of the closest ear, nose, and throat (ENT) specialist and unsteadily walked several miles to his o≈ce. ‘‘They gave me an ear exam with an otoscope and said they didn’t see anything unusual. That I shouldn’t worry about it too much and that the regular doctor was out of town for the weekend and would be back on Monday and I should come back then.’’ Pierschalla was not appeased. ‘‘I had an intuition that something was seriously wrong.’’ As time progressed, his condition continued to deteriorate. The ringing got louder in his right ear, and he started to hear buzzing in his left ear. Vertigo and nausea set in. On Friday, he paid a visit to the family doctor, who gave him an antivertigo medication and a tranquilizer to keep him calm until the ENT physician returned on Monday. In the meantime, Pierschalla’s hearing deteriorated to the point he was having a hard time understanding people. Trying to keep his equilibrium, he went to the house of a friend who was a jazz aficionado and who put on a recording of a Norwegian trio. ‘‘I wasn’t hearing it very well, but I seem to recall that was probably the last album that I heard with much fidelity to it,’’ said Pierschalla. By Saturday, he was having di≈culty walking and experienced loud ringing in both ears. Striving to maintain a semblance of normalcy, he tried walking to the café where he and his friends regularly gathered. ‘‘I was stumbling down the street as if I was very drunk . . . At one point I remember stumbling and falling into bushes on the side of the road, but I was determined to make it down there.’’ By Sunday, Pierschalla and his parents decided to wait no longer and went to the local hospital. Except for his symptoms , Michael was in good health. He had no fever, no obvious infection, no history of hearing problems, and he had no illness immediately before the onset of his bizarre symptoms. Every test that was run came back negative, [3...

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