On the morning of Friday, July 13th (yes, Friday the 13th!!), around 5 A.M., I awoke with what sounded like someone blowing an athletic whistle in my right ear. It was really loud! Then I had tinnitus in that ear, so I got up and put some homeopathic ear drops in it with a wad of cotton to keep it in and went back to sleep.
 
 At 7 A.M., the tinnitus was still there and a feeling of fullness, so at 8 A.M., I called my primary care physician’s office and said that I must come in. I was told to come right over. My hearing was tested at 30 decibels. I was given Allegria and told that it should help. I went to my office and after about 45 minutes I felt like I was getting seasick. I went into the conference room where my boss was having a meeting with an employee and I said “Sorry, I have to lie down, I can’t stand up: I immediately went down on the carpet any my boss went bananas (he’s not good in an emergency). He got my cell phone, found a girlfriend’s # (someone he knew, too) and called her and told her to come over ASAP. I was too out of it to be much help.
 
 My friend came and got me, drove me home. The boss followed in my car so that I would have it. An hour and a half later, I was in bed (naked, as it was a hot day) and the room started spinning. I thought “uh oh...I’m in trouble.” I called my girlfriend and asked her “How far away are you?” That’s all I remember. I woke up almost two hours later in the ER at UCLA. She was sitting there next to me and I asked her how I got there. I blacked out but somehow called my neighbor who has a key, who called the paramedics, who came and got me, dressed me (Heavens!) put in an IV and took me to the ER. The hospital staff then put in an IV in the other arm, gave me an MRI and took a battery of tests. I have no recollection of any of this. I lost those two hours and for the life of me, can’t figure out where I was. There was no light in the tunnel. Nothing.
 
 The resident doctors surmised that I had Menieres, but Menieres comes in stages, over a period of time and I had vertigo, dizziness, fullness of ears, tinnitus and loss of hearing & balance all in one day. This was impossible. Almost 6 weeks later, my ENT gave the final diagnosis. It was Menieres. He also suggested that I was a good candidate for the BAHA procedure. I thought he was kidding – put a titanium screw in my head?? Well, I have a friend with titanium rods in his back, so I thought, “okay, have faith”.
 
 Two weeks later I met the surgeon, Dr. Akira Ishiyama, who told me, according to what happened to me on that Friday, that I had a stroke in the ear. In the ear?? I Googled it: Phil Collins also had one. We are all used to hearing that strokes happen in the brain, not the ear. I was shocked, but grateful to God that I did not have one in the brain. I was also told that the hearing loss was/is permanent. I cried for 5 minutes. That’s all. Onward!! The doctor arranged for me to have a hearing evaluation and I saw him again another two weeks later and then the procedure was set for January 16: exactly six months after the stroke as that was the standard minimum of amount of time allowed before the BAHA could be done.
 
 In April, I got the Divino. I have no regrets. And if it were not for the BAHA Users Support website forum, I might not have decided to have it done.