It left me on October 9th, 2013. Its place was not left empty – a padded silence filled the void.

I was sure it would have come back – I spent the whole day waiting, no doubt in my mind. But it did not.

The day after, the padded silence was still there, dizzines and nausea were its mates. I was trembling, could barely walk and keep my head high. My sister, otolaryngologist, looked at me while testing my hearing, distraught: “You do not hear anything from your right ear..”

The search for the reason why it left was quite a urgent one. No neural impairment, but a MRI was the only way to certainty. And the certainty was there – luckily.

On the fourth day after its absence, ache started to knock at my right ear. And with ache, the final diagnosis came: viral labyrinthitis caused by Herpes Zoster.

I was physically feeling like an amoeba floating on a oil solution, feeling like there was a magnet attracting my head towards the floor, from its back. Always, even when sleeping.

Six days in bed with the padded silence, dizziness, back ache and nausea as companions. Could not read, could not eat, could not watch TV or videos. But while my physical body was quite destroyed, my mood was calm and peaceful.

I surrendered to what was going on in my body and accepted the forced inactivity as something natural, as it actually was. And with surrender came awareness: the magic of stereophonic sound, the enhanced food taste the sound of its melting in your mouth can give, the weird feeling of touching the skin around the deaf ear, the amazing power we have to stand up, walk, turn the head up and down, right and left without feeling dizzy.

But most of all, I became aware I am surrounded by marvelous people who love me and support me. My family, first, then many many friends who sent me messages and helped in letting Matilde’s, my daughter, life stay unchanged. Friends came just to say hello, to bring some relief with Reiki massage,  to cook comfort food, to pray together Zen buddhist mantras.

And I believe that this positive thinking was really appreciated by my dormant genes – Kazuo Murakami docet –  which turned on to give a boost to my recovery and to my willingness to become each and every day more in love with this beautiful life of mine. It is true that we do not appreciate what we have until it is gone – labirynthitis left me partially deaf, I do not feel sad for what I have lost but I feel extremely thankful for what I still have and what I have gained because of it.