The entirety of last week both Jon and I were fighting a flu.
Late on Friday, I started feeling intense pain in my left ear. Like someone was pushing needles through my ear canal. To the point where I was screaming in pain.
Jon said I should go to the doctor. I didn’t want to move – omg the idea of being in a moving car made me want to puke just thinking about it – but agreed that if it was still bad after sleeping, we would go.
On Saturday the pain had subsided in my left ear but started up in my right. We went to a Walgreen’s clinic to get diagnosed and, hopefully, treated.
Otitis media.
Otitis externa.
We waited for our prescriptions to be filled right there.
Amoxycillin.
Neomycin drops.
(Jon got amoxycillin too, and Tesselon pearls.)
So here I am on Wednesday and I cannot hear worth a damn via my right ear. My tinnitus in that ear is LOUD. When I walk, every step of my right leg causes a rather loud noise inside my head. On my left side I can hear better, but it’s only half as good as it was before this. The tinnitus on that side is mild. And when I shake my head, I hear one tone at the right and one on the left – almost an octave apart. The tones are higher in the daytime, lower in the nighttime.
Don’t get me started on the auditory hallucinations this has caused.
This is all brand spanking new for me because I cannot recall ever having an ear infection, ever. While the experience was initially a painful experience I never want to repeat, and it is currently really fucking irritating, it’s also very *interesting.* I mean, the tones alone are kind of neat, experiencing how the eardrum is affected by the movement of my head and the fluid within. It’s also intriguing to note how my brain has been interpreting different pressure on different locations around and in my ear. While I would never want to repeat the painful ones, and some of the non-painful ones are truly disconcerting (like the one that sounded like cell phone interference in music), the fact that I can hear my vertebrae moving much more clearly, and sometimes feel my heartbeat, well… I hafta admit it’s kinda cool.
Of course, the fact that listening to NIN hurts? Not so cool. (It’s just Ghosts, ffs.)
If it’s still a problem tomorrow, I’m supposed to call the clinic. Eek.
Will our intrepid adventurer beat the wild bacteria swarm? Stay tuned!
killer puppy tails 