Dear readers,

This may be an unusual request in a piano forum, and if it's inappropriate, the moderators are welcome to shift or kill the topic.

A close family member has recently (about two weeks ago) pulled through a severe meningitis (including a coma), and early indications are that all functions except hearing and possibly balance/motor skills are returning to normal. There is reasonable hearing remaining, but some loss is apparent, as is tinnitus and other psycho-acoustic effects.

Seeing that this is a musicians' forum, my request is this:

If you have any experience or any good reading on the aural damage that can be caused by (pneumococcal) meningitis, please send me a PM. I'm specifically interested in physical and psychoacoustic effects such as tinnitus, partial hearing loss, frequency shifts and change of perceived intervals, as well as the short, medium and long term prognosis for recovery from (probably mild) cochlear damage.

Responses should, if possible, be more thorough than the average Google search results or Wikipedia article. I've been there.

I'm taking the liberty of making this an open call, but until further notice, I'm planning on keeping all dialog on this matter private, because it's still quite sensitive at this stage.

As I said: if this post is deemed inappropriate, I have no problem with a move or even a deletion. I'm just trying to gather as much information as possible, and I thought that this being a musician's forum, perhaps some of you have some first-hand experiences.

Kind regards,
Mark