One day before school started I found out that my three-week ear infection that was excruciatingly painful and caused me to lose the ability to hear in my left ear was, in fact, mastoiditis. I told the fantastic ENT who got to the bottom of the nightmare as he brought in the CT scans with a diagnosis: "This sounds major." He nodded. Fortunately, after a bone-specific antibiotic and surgery to drain the middle ear and insert a ventilating tube two weeks ago I feel I have a good chance of recovery. Still need to be monitored, though. Very scary stuff and it made me acutely aware of how connected hearing and sound conduction is to communication and feeling comfortable with others and yourself. This week will be the quarter mark of the semester and Thank God, I have made it through so far. Three criminal justice classes which I love and one in humanities.
I've been re-training my ear with none other than The Carpenters (Karen Carpenter has such a beautiful voice) so wanted to share the "adorkable" Zooey Deschanel version of "Yesterday Once More."
-G
Hi, Geneva! I'm glad that you were correctly diagnosed and got the proper treatment. In terms of pain, I think ear infections are right up there with slipped disks and child bearing (so I'm told). It must feel good to be on the mend.
ReplyDeleteI find that not knowing why I'm sick is usually worse than the actual sickness. I had a ear problem a few months back - nothing major like yours. I had been cleaning my ears with a local brand of q-tip and woke up with a clicking sound in my ear whenever i moved my jaw. I resolved not to stick anything in my ear again and endured several weeks of clicking and a few visits to the doctor. Finally, in a Grandpa Tom moment, a la 'the hell with the grass pile!', I resorted to q-tips again and discovered the last bit of wax that had been causing all that clicking.
Hey, maybe this is a sign. Is medicine my calling?
Hi Matt! ...you are so right, it's the worst when you are sick and don't know why- and especially when your doctor doesn't know! I went to the ENT on my own, after my primary care doc said I was being anxious and needed to wait for the antibiotics to kick in. I'm a big believer that we all have a "gut feeling" when something, whatever it may be, isn't right.
ReplyDeleteI'm totally freaked out by your ear wax/Qtip story and I think for sure that medicine could be your thing- and you did a "self-operation" too! It's always scary when something doesn't feel/work/act right and even though there are thousands of things that do work, the one thing that doesn't work can drive you mad. I'm glad that you are better, and it's definitely another page from the Uncle (or, in your case, Grandpa) Tom playbook!
You probably never heard about the epic mud slinging session Nate and I had in some river in Arkansas river during our cross country trip. I managed to get Nate right in the mouth with a huge glob of mud a few times. But he beaned me in the ear so many times that I was still extracting clay from my ear a year later.
ReplyDeleteGeneva - it's amazing how much you look like Janet when she was in college.
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