Ear ring

No, not the piercing kind, the kind where you hearing a ringing in your ears. The really annoying kind. The kind that usually tag teams with a pounding headache and a feeling that your eyes might pop outta their sockets. The kind that gets so bad that it makes it nearly impossible to think because all of your focus is driven to that damn sound pressure in your ears.

That pretty much sums up my last 6 weeks. It was also what I was alluding to in my last post. Last week it finally got the better of me and after Betty convinced me that it was probably just Tinnitus that I came to the realization it wasn't going to get better on its own and finally went to the doctor. I don't like going to the doctor. Don't get me wrong, I like my doctor and trust my M.D., but I'm just leary of the modern medical methods that preach healing via antibiotics and chemicals. The last time I had to go see the doctor I ended up on medical leave for six weeks during which I took a total of 5 different antibiotics, each in increasing strength. They took such a toll on my system that my bright yellow Live Strong wristband (you know, the one Lance Armstrong made popular) actually changed color where it touched my skin in a matter of weeks. Freaky! Oh, and my shit didn't stink. Believe me, I'm not bragging. My shit literally didn't smell like, well, anything. (Sorry, was that an overshare?) I don't think I had any living bacteria — good or bad — left in my body after that. But after all that time the sinus infection/walking pneumonia finally met its match.

Flash forward nearly two years and there I am, back at my doctor listening to him tell me the ringing in my ears is most likely being caused by my sinuses. My heart sank. "I'm not going to have to take more damn antibiotics, will I?" I hear myself half-defensively ask. He seemed a little caught off guard by my question until he looked at my chart again and quietly said to himself, "Oh, that's right." I look down at the floor where my stomach had since joined my heart. "Why don't we start you off with a nasal spray instead to relieve the pressure and see how that goes."

So far the spray has been helping but it's now miracle recovery by any means. On a scale of 1 to 100 (with 100 feeling like someone drilling into my eardrums while endlessly projecting every sound imaginable into my head which is being squeezed in a vice while I'm flying in a plane that constantly keeps changing cabin pressure, which is what it felt like last week) I'm down to about a 40 in the mornings and top out around 70-75 about the time I leave the office. Hope that helps to explain why it's been so quiet round the blog for the past several weeks, and why it might continue to be a bit postless for a couple more.