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July 22, 2009
Hum drum
On and off for the last, oh, month maybe, I've had this hum in one ear. I can hear just fine, as long as you talk louder than the hum (I swear it's not voices, it tells me NOTHING) in my head. The hum is intermittent, and if I hear it in the morning, it is often gone by that afternoon. For a while I thought I could keep it from happening by not turning my head to the left in my sleep, but lately it's been showing up anyway.
I have poked things in my ear canal, stolen Katie's swimmer's ear drops, filled my ear with peroxide, tried to depressurize and slept flat on my back with my face pointed directly at the ceiling for days on end, and it keeps coming back.
So today, I did something radical.
I went to the doctor.
I had to combine it with something real, just in case the ear thing was all in my imagination. After all, I don't want to look like a hypochondriac to my doctor. I've made repeated pleas for thyroid retests and antibiotics, taken my kids in for multiple kinds of ear infections and broken bones, bot to mention well checks. He's going to start thinking we're medically fragile, or that I have some huge crush on him, and I'm willing to pitch myself in front of a bus just to see him more often.
I combined my frivolous ear check with a gratuitous thyroid recheck. It was the best I could do, and I was hoping at least one of them would pan out into something real.
I didn't get to see my regular doctor, which worked out fine, because Dr. Fonze (not his real name, but the name I keep thinking in my head) may barely have been able to look me in the eye, but he could see fluid in my ears, particularly the left. He offered steroids, which I took, and some comforting advice about there being worse things than nursing a baby while on Prednisone. He even bolstered my position that if I'm feeling tired, the thyroid is the first thing we should check, which I am, and he did. Last, but not least, he offered his personal "ripping the kid off the boobie" story, one that involved Mama leaving town while Daddy deals with the resulting hell demon.
I'm left with high hopes for a hum free life, where a tiny pill allows me to sleep 7 hours and wake without feeling the need for an immediate nap.
We'll just see how that goes, shall we?
Posted by me at July 22, 2009 2:37 PM