down with the sickness

Posted by Ashley on September 30, 2010
Filed under: Health

Sooooooooooooo sick of being sick. As I’m writing this, I can hear myself breathing, loudly, *inside* my head. It feels like I’ve stuffed an entire cotton mop into my left ear, or like I’m underwater, but only on one side. My face and neck are slightly sore. Everything’s really inflamed up in there. Occasionally I can hear the insistent ebb and flow of my pulse. I went to the doc again Monday (when I was feeling a little better, natch!) and I no longer had a severe ear infection, just Eustachian tube dysfunction. The remedy? There is none! Anything you try, particularly the neti-pot, could make it worse. I’m back on Claritin-D 12-hour and a nose spray, which I HATE. But nothing makes this feeling like someone’s stuffed cotton into my ear go away. At least I’m only getting twinges of pain. If the pain were constant, then I’d be in real trouble. Yesterday I got worse again, this time with a sore throat from drainage, and a low-grade fever. I slept most of the afternoon away in that state. So I made an appointment with an ENT doc in Palo Alto and saw him this morning.

The fluid is back in my ear, and when I pop my ear by holding my nose, the doc said it looks like the carbonation in a 7-Up in there, all bubbly, but not in a festive way. Yay! He put me on a round of steroids to reduce the inflammation and allow the fluid to drain. Hopefully I’m in the 70% that steroids help, and don’t have to go for another round of steroids or – worse – getting a hole poked in my eardrum to release the fluid. But you have to take 6 pills spaced out on the first day, and by the time I could pick up the prescription it was too late to start today. So tomorrow it is.

So I’m sorry for the dearth of posts lately – I keep thinking I’m about to kick this, and then I try to actually function and I just get too tired, or my brain no work-y. Because I’m not deathly ill, not getting much done feels more like I’m just being lazy. Which I am, to some extent. I mean, otherwise, I wouldn’t feel this guilty, right?

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