I'm not going to add to the clog in your email file which is about to hit record highs I'm sure. In case you are reading this, I was tempted to offer you some optimistic words. But you are a positive person. And I'm confident you will give yourself optimistic words. I love my hearing too and would hate to lose it. I love music too. It must really hurt.
Please forgive someone who roughly bashed you years ago. Lately, I've been defending you and your right to 'vacations'. I'm glad I did.
I noticed that he was getting callers all wrong. He would take a call and then reply in a manner that was way off from what the caller was saying. And I would think, "Where did Rush get that? He wasn't listening, at all, to what that caller was trying to say.", and it was true.
A couple times when he was going the wrong way with a call, he would suddenly stop(as if tipped off) and with frustrated "huffs" in his speech and just cut to a break.
I thought he was just out of touch and stopped listening to him about a month ago. Now I know why he was getting things wrong. He must be reading what the callers are saying and without the tone and inflection, he is losing something in the translation.