BEEP, BEEP

It was abnormally quiet. My usual white noise distractions to mask my noisy ears were silent. No TV humming away in the next room and no music from my speakers. All quiet except those noisy ears. The right one ringing and the left one ticking. Ah, sweet tinnitus.

Surprisingly with all the ear noises, I still have fairly decent hearing and usually keep the TV at about 17. Not great but not bad--for now.

Then a new noise entered my world. As I was working on my computer, very faintly I heard beep, beep. Two gentle beeps, then nothing.  With my noisy ears, I often have a problem telling where a noise is coming from.

Thinking it may be coming from outside, that was the first place I looked. Maybe a garbage truck backing up?? Nope, just some birds out there but not the rapidly running sort.

I know you are all ready going where I went next. Those annoying smoke detectors that beep when the battery gets low.  Could not hear it coming from them but I changed all the batteries anyway. Still heard beeping when I would go into the quiet of my computer room.

Then everything in my house that used batteries got new ones but the soft beeps continued. Now it was every three minutes.  I was getting irritated when a scary thought hit me.

 I remembered  that Linda Myers, who writes the interesting blog Thoughts from a Bag Lady in Waiting   about a year ago had written about her husband Art's pacemaker that started beeping while they were in Greece. Oh the horrors.

So could my pacemaker be sending out distress signals? Yikes. So I first checked Google to see if my model beeped. Some sites said it could so I called my cardiologist.

The nurse I talked to was a quite dismissive and insisted mine had no capabilities for beeping. I tried to tell her Google said differently and mentioned Linda's experience but she remained firm. She insisted that when I had the pacemaker checked two months ago, I still had 9 years left on the battery. Hum--no help there.

So I went back to Google to get more information when I heard it again. The soft beep, beep. I really need to buy a stethoscope.

Just for the heck of it, since I was hearing it while in front of the computer, I removed my laptop's battery, reset it, restarted the computer, then listened. All was quiet.

Was that it?? I don't know but the beeping has stopped. I was no longer a imitating a Roadrunner.  Of course it could mean that my pacemaker just died but since I feel pretty good, I am going with the computer.

I'm kind of glad now that I didn't get huffy with the cardiologist's nurse. I have an appointment there next week and need to keep the peace.

Has your computer ever made beeping sounds?