The Hubby says it is an ear wig, just like in Night Gallery, or the Twilight Zone, but I say, “Bull Pucky,” it is an infected Eustachian tube and it hurts. He says my brain is being eaten. I am in pain. This is not something I do very often given my history of being abused through medical procedures as a child, but this time I’m making an exception. I want to bitch.
I am still doing my June Nablopomo thing, but I’m a little behind. Did I mention I have a screaming ear ache? At the end of last week my neck hurt royally, the pain and tenseness covered the whole right side of my neck, occiput, and around my right rear. I decided to go to the chiropractor who I’ve gone to for ages when my neck stops moving, which it does from time to time. He does massage, acupuncture, and chiropractic adjustment. It helped, tons, but my muscles were extremely sore afterward from being knotted up for the week.
When the soreness began to subside from the muscles of my neck on Saturday I realized I had an earache. So I went to see a nurse practitioner at Minute Clinic in CVS. She found no signs of infection, but did find that my right ear had impacted wax, so she cleaned that out. I can’t figure that one out, I have never had that problem, and I don’t put cotton swabs in my ears, so I don’t know how that happened. Not only was it embarrassing, it hurt. She wrote a prescription for some numbing ear drops and some steroidal nose spray and said it would all be fine, and I should use saline spray all the time because Tucson is just too dry not to do so. She hated the idea of my netty pot.
I filled the prescriptions and started home, right after stopping to get the air in my tires checked. The tire pressure light came on. All four tires were separating. Seems the 2009 car I bought from a dealer in Scottsdate who has some sort of an association with Alice Cooper, sold me a 2009 car with 2007 tires on it. Warranty expired. Grrrr. Still in pain and now buying tires. Tolerance disappears and bitch mode engages. Did not bitch at the nice guy, Chris, at Discount Tire, but I whined, a LOT. He didn’t charge me labor and transferred the road warranty, for nails and the like, to these tires, and gave me more remaining tread “trade in” than he had to.
Went home snorted the steroid spray and gurgled in the ear drops per prescribed amount at prescribed time intervals. Pain numbs for a tiny bit after about 6-8 hours. I wake up in the middle of the night with a stiff neck and severe ear pain. Wah! I sound just like like Lucille Ball. It sucks. Sunday is a total loss. Still doing all the meds as recommended, along with Excedrin Migraine that I had to take to take the edge off. Decided to call my regular health clinic on Monday morning.
Monday morning at 8 a.m., the minute they open I am on the horn with the clinic office and they agree to have the Triage nurse call me back asap. 1 hour and 30 minutes later the Triage Nurse calls me back and wonder, upon wonder, gets me in an hour later. I brush my teeth and throw on some clothes and zip over to the clinic to see a doctor I haven’t seen before. This Dr. is older than an intern so I think everything is going to be ok. He looks in my ears and say the two ears look different, and neither one looks to be infected, but that the light doesn’t bounce off the right one, the one that hurts. This guy says, ENT specialist referral is the prudent thing to do. But this guy hands me a prescription for an antihistamine, and for Naproxen, and for a referral to the guy who did some surgery on my septum last year. Crap. A referral to one of the best ENTs in the country. That will be a really quick turn around for an appt., no doubt.
As I drop off the prescriptions I decide to go get a massage focused on my neck, head, and shoulder to maybe help with drainage for the clogged up Eustachian tube that has now become painful along with my ear. I turn off music in the car because it now hurts to listen to, and I am convinced that even though I can hear better ever since the wax got cleaned out that Neil Young in his Johnny Rotten Days during the Rust Never Sleeps tour in 1977 is definitely to blame for what has now turned into hearing sensitivity and probably hearing loss. I couldn’t hear for a day after that concert, and I’ve always said that eventually I would pay with my hearing for attending that concert. It is coming true. The massage therapy office is closed. I go home to discover my husband has signed the wrong early voting request, mine, and if I want to vote early this fall, which I do because I will be out of town that day, and I have to go downtown to request a different form, while he can just fill his out properly and send it off. Grrrr. I’m contemplating telling him to pound sand…. when someone comes on the phone call from the ENT office I’ve been on hold with for several minutes, to let me know that the Dr. they want me to see is someone different than the person I’ve seen before and they want me to wait for an appointment well into July. I tell them again that I am in pain, what I probably need is just an antibiotic and can’t they reconsider, please… by this time I suspect that my whining has turned into something that forebodingly sounds like choked off sobs. The scheduler miraculously finds an appointment tomorrow afternoon with the Dr. I’ve seen before.
I get in touch with the Massage Therapy Office that, it turns out, is closed Monday mornings, and they get me in to see the therapist I like a bit later this afternoon. As I drive off to pick up the prescriptions that are now filled, my daughter calls and asks to borrow 600 bucks for two weeks so that they can make a deposit on a new rental house in Minneapolis. Did I ever mention that Minneapolis is the second most expensive city in which to rent in the United States.
I may never come back from my massage therapy appointment!
Moral of the story: if you use a Netty Pot, never stop using it, especially in a dry climate.
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