I had a music teacher who would read sheet music like this. He said he could hear it, and he prefered it to actually listening to a recording because his imagination was so much richer than what could be captured by a recording.
I thought it was amazing and really envied this ability.
I hope you recover from yours quickly. Food is the thing about Christmas I look forward to the most. This year I’ve just about managed to eat 5 plain crackers in the past 24 hours 😂