Advice on how to liquidate system


Few weeks ago, I sustained traumatic blast induced hearing loss during a training incident. The level of hearing loss and tinnitus is pretty bad, I’ve had only a minimal level of improvement. midrange and upper frequencies sound like a 1970’s transistor radio. Horrible. The reality of the situation is looking like my audiophile days are pretty much over. Now I’m thinking of what to do with the gear…the thought of dismantling my rig and selling piece by piece is nauseating. Are there any resources that would come in and take it all? At this point I really don’t give a crap about being lowballed, it’s aggravating to look at what Ive put so much time and effort into and not be able to enjoy it. I need to move on.  

 

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You are getting good advice here.  Don't sell and don't give up.  I lost my hearing for 2 or 3 days at a very loud rock concert. It eventually came back with some tinnitus that, some days I can mentally block it out and other days I cannot.  No cure for that, you just have to deal with it.

I’m in the “don’t sell, yet” camp. Suffering a traumatic injury is bad enough. Let some time go by and ignore the stereo system for a couple months. Go to a fabric store and buy some nice cloth to lay onto the components. It’ll look decent, keep the dust off and you won’t have to look at it. Who knows, with luck, you’ll start a whole new love affair with music and your system?

 I’m sorry about the accident. 
hang in there!

As many others have said, do not sell. If it were me in your shoes and I sold my system, I would immediately regret my decision. 

If you do get hearing aids find an audiologist who sells Widex aids. They are the most natural sounding aids I could find. Truly wonderful. Other brands costing $6500 and more sound like the worst class D from hell you can imagine. Believe me, I found out the hard and very expensive way.

Very sad to learn all this, but nice to see all the support and advice here. Everyone's different, but maybe my saga will give you some hope.

Coming back from Prague a few years ago, there was a family with a screaming baby in the next seats; that baby screamed for most of the long flight. Probably, it was screaming because it was in pain. In any case, three days after getting home, I came down with a severe ear ache. Two days later, all hearing was gone in my left ear. I could rub the outer ear and hear nothing. Snapping fingers an inch away were inaudible. 

My regular doctor sent me to an audiologist, who did a battery of tests (including bone conduction), and concluded that the cilia in my ear had been damaged by the infection. He told me this was not repairable by any standard therapy, and that my hearing wasn't coming back: the fact that the bone stimulation showed the same loss as through the ear led him to this dire conclusion. He mentioned an experimental treatment—hyperbaric oxygen, or something. There was a local clinic that did this, but it was very expensive, not covered by insurance, and carried some risk of being consumed by flames (really; one is put in a chamber for an hour at a time with very high concentrations of oxygen—which is extremely flammable!)—so, a hard no. Also said no to cortisone injections directly into the ear.

Well, the prognosis turned out to be wrong, I'm relieved to report. The hearing did come back; slowly after about six months, but almost fully at last. 

So hang in there. Don't sell your kit just yet. In situations like this, I often remember the doctor's opinion on that old TV show "Northern Exposure": "The body is an amazing self-righting machine."