The Vertiginous Depth of ‘Losing Music’
Like author John Cotter, I have bi-lateral Ménière’s disease. I have spent years trying to understand and manage this impairment with its crazy-making mix of fluctuating hearing loss, raging tinnitus, and spinning vertigo. So I came to Cotter’s memoir Losing Music as in an attack, grasping for a steady ground. This book does for Ménière’s what great memoirs focused on strange illnesses should do—it educates us about a specific condition, invites us to witness how the author manages his, and compels us to consider how we all manage our own adversities. Cotter shows well just how hard it is to accept and live with this condition.
Ménière’s disease has no known cause and no known cure, yet Cotter urgently seeks out experts to better understand it, anchoring his story through visits to specialists in Denver, Chicago, Boston, at
