In which I lose my hearing

About two weeks ago, I awoke to a lot of pain in my ear.  I thought to myself, "That's very painful.  I'll call the doctor."  I called and waited for the nice doctor to suppose that I had an ear infection that followed along after the cold I was getting over.  "Take ibuprofen and call your primary in the morning."

At 7 AM sharp, I called and got an appointment for later in the day.  Sure enough, I have a middle ear infection, or Otitis Media.  I also had a load of icky, colored stuff in my outer ear - notably with plenty of black in it.  Got that all cleaned up.  Over to the pharmacy I go to get the antibiotics.  "This will be over soon." I think to myself as I go back to work and take a big pill.

The ear still hurts, though not as much.  Nighttime, another pill. Morning, another one.  48 hours later, all symptoms are about the same.  Back to the primary, except he's out so I see a different fellow.

Another exam and a different antibiotic, and some drops that contain a steroid to help reduce the inflammation.  This was taking advantage of the perforation (hole) in the tympanic membrane, which was news to me.

At this point, we need a diagram.

Remember that the outer ear is open to the air, and the middle is open to your throat via the Eustachean tube, and the middle is filled with fluid inside the cochlea.  Tiny hairs inside the cochlea and semicircular canals are connected to nerves that tell the brain which way the head is positioned, whether it's moving and in what direction, and whether the stapes is vibrating against the little window (covered by a delicate membrane) that separates the inside of the cochlea from the middle ear.  That vibration, is the result of the ear drum (the tympanic membrane) pressing on the malleus bone, which pivots where it's attached and presses on the incus bone which pivots, and then presses on the stapes bone, which is connected to the incus by a tiny bit of cartilage.

That's how it works in a healthy ear.  In my ear - remember, this blog is all about me - the middle ear is inflamed and filled with goo (I imagine) that dampens the vibration of the tympanic membrane and the three wee bones.

Now 72 hours after I started the second antibiotic and kept instilling those drops, I was sure I should have been lots better.

HAH!

It's Monday morning.  Still in a fair amount of pain, hearing getting poor on that side.  So I called the primary and they got me a referral to the ENT, or Ear Nose & Throat specialist, though when you get to the office it's called Ontology.  So the doctor takes one look in my ear and says, "You have a bad fungal infection." (Remember that black stuff?)  The doctor whizzes out my ear with holy water or something and a teeny tiny vacuum.  Now I can hear better!

"I'm going to apply this antifungal cream." GLOOOP, and now my ear is full of cream with fungicide and my hearing goes to about zero percent in that ear.  "Come back on Friday." He says in my good ear, and then he puts a cotton ball into what's left of the outer ear canal.  Now all I can hear when I speak is my voice conducted though my skull in that ear, and it getting normally to the other ear.  It's weird and disorienting.

Back at work I have a week filled with meetings, troubleshooting of problems with a completely out of control product line that I inherited from a recently terminated manager, and a million-dollar building expansion project.  I can't hear normally, what I can hear is distorted and confusing, and the continuation of the second course of antibiotics gives me tummy trouble and makes me itch badly enough to seek over-the-phone doctor advice and take Benadryl, which knocks me the fuck out.

Friday comes.  All week I have waited for the return visit to the Ontological doctor who filled my ear with goop.  I think the goop is all still there and continuing to cause my temporary half-deafness.  At 4 on Friday relief will come and I will be able to hear again!

HAH!

The good doctor looks in my ear and tells me that MOST of the fungus is gone and he's going to clean up the rest.  The teeny tiny vacuum is once again employed for a vigorous Hoovering of the outer ear.  More inspection with a magnifier... "You still have a perforation."  and "I'm sorry to make you deaf again."  GLOOOOP.  This should all be normal again by Monday.  Not so bad, I can take it easy this weekend.

About 10 PM, my ear is hurting a lot and I decide it's time to sleep it off.  Fitfully, I make it through the night.  I'm miserable.  My ear seems to be DRAINING stuff.  Not to be too gross (thanks for reading this far) but it's pink and tan.  I call up the doctor's answering service so they can call me back.  (I've lost count by now.)  I talk to a doctor after some time.  I'm asked to go to Urgent Care because it's Saturday.

The doctor (this is the fourth I've seen in person) looks closely at my ear, hears my whole saga, apologizes a lot, goes off to talk to the Head Ontologist via phone, and returns to explain.  She calls me a gentleman in the second person.  Thanks.

Apparently, I still have a middle ear infection.  I have a third round of antibiotics (day 2 of at least 5).  Yesterday and this morning, it was still draining through the perforation in the eardrum. DRIP.  Yummy.  Tonight, it's stopped doing that, but the hearing is still way off in that ear.

I've always had good hearing, at least until last week.  I never really experienced what it's like to not really be able to hear.  It's disorienting, confusing, and humbling.  I feel isolated and embarrassed that I can't really hear.  I never understood what the hearing impaired go through.  Now I do; at least a little.

In a few days this will all clear up.  I won't soon forget it.

Observations

Our kitchen range (that would be "stove" for people who don't live in woodburning land) got old and we had to put it out to pasture.  In it's place there is a shiny convection-oven five-burner thingy.  There was some obligatory grumbling due to the gas inlet location but after a bit of impassioned male grunting I got it installed.  Now we can bake bacon in about 1/2 the time.  That's hot.

Our house is well past voting age and there is a pipe that runs about 60 feet from the garage to where the main drain plumbing assembly is back near the bathrooms.  This 2" pipe ends at about 18" up and takes a turn down and enters the rest of the drain.  I know the rest of you with an engineering background are starting to think about slope and flow rate... Let me assure you that there is too little of both for anything more than plain water.  Any wee scraps of food or lint from the washer turn to cement in the line and it stops draining.  It likes to do this every couple of months.

Usually these backups happen when we have guests, or when it's late at night, or cold, or whenever it's most inconvenient.  Being as handy as I am, I have always resolved the issue myself.  Let me assure you (once again) gentle readers that this is uniformly a Very Icky(TM) process with the junk that comes out of the pipe.  It does not lift ones soul.

So this last time, after making a horrible smelly mess for two hours and not resolving the problem, I called in a professional.  Actually I called two of them.  The first one to come and unclog the drain (which was done rapidly and without a mess for well under a C note), and the second to give me an estimate on replacing the 63 year old pipe that doesn't slope enough with a slick new one that is pitched more.  We'll hear on Monday or so how much they'll want for that.  Don't tell them in advance that I'm pretty much gonna pay whatever they want.

On the way back from buying the stove, Sharon and I saw a fellow dressed in a white suit, with white shoes, carrying a white briefcase, wearing five-foot long angel wings - feathers and everything - just walking down the sidewalk in Belmont as if he was on the way to the drugstore or something.  We asked each other if we had really seen that, then wondered if it was worth turning around for to take a picture.  It almost was.

Bang; you're dead.

I heard the somber music and the unrehearsed tones of the commentator on the radio when I went to go to the bank before lunch.  It must be very bad, I thought.  Then the story spooled out.  More than 20 dead, lots of dead children.  Shooter dead.  I had to turn it off.  I played some 40+ year-old music.  When I came out to the car from the bank, the commentators were still at it.  I turned it off again.

I imagined the horror of the parents on hearing the news without knowing whether their child was dead.  I imagined the horror of the adults at the school on seeing the dead children.  I imagined the unimaginable horror of the children while they were getting gunned down.  I imagined the unthinkable and life-altering conversations that the parents of the surviving children will have with their children who don't actually know what happened.

I tried and failed to imagine how anyone could stand in front of a classroom of eight and nine year-olds and shoot them.

When I got home and read the thoughtless things that people said in the aftermath, I felt sorry. Sorry for us as a civilization that we simply throw up our hands and say that nothing could have prevented this, that this is "not as bad as (fill in the blank)", that a solution is not even worth trying to discuss, let alone implement.

Happy Birthday

Now I'm a day older than yesterday, but because today is my birthday, somehow that makes me a whole year older in just one day.  It's weird.

Thanksgiving Day

As today is Thanksgiving, I want to take a few moments to reflect "aloud" on what I have to be thankful for.  I'll try to leave out the mundane stuff so you can get back to what you were doing.

Life - It isn't permanent so I'll be thankful while I can.
Sharon - She has made my life so rich.
Jessamy - So tiny at first, and now so grown up.
Andy - An amazing man who has taught me so many things.
Danny - Never far from playful imagination.
My home - It keeps me warm, dry and safe.

My family - I am just a leaf of an awesome tree; it's complexity awes me.
My friends - You are legion and you form my social world.  I am never lonely.

Cashews - The perfect nut.

I'm gonna blog

I said I'd post today even though I *just* posted yesterday.  So I posted.

My friends on FB nearly came to keyboard blows over the whole election thing.  I told them that they were real civil to hold it down and not get all e'splody on us.

To my conservative friends: I'm sorry about your inevitable disappointment.  I'm not sorry that the ideas on governance espoused by your standard bearer were rejected, and in all but one of the "swing" states.  320 electoral votes literally means that those ideas were broadly rejected.

In which I say

I may never make it to 1000 posts, but I'll keep working at it.  Today, since I've been saving up loads of topics and thoughts, I may pile on a bit.  I hope you'll understand.  Bless me readers, for I have not penned; it has been five weeks since my last confession.

The Great Dickens Christmas Fair and Holiday Party is on us again.  The other day I was trying to figure out how many years I've been at this but the closest I got was ten or eleven.  Or maybe nine.  I went back and looked at a lot of pictures and tried to figure out from the date stamps and what I was wearing.  All my life, I have been terrible at remembering chronology and dates, and how long blah blah blah.  If any of you faithful readers really know when I started, please let me know.  The winner gets to sit in my hot tub.

Speaking of boobs, during the naughty french postcards auditions, several of my female cast-mates had whipped out their boobs for the audition pictures (like we all do) and more than ever it was just like they were exposing their elbows, only far smoother and with nipples.  Maybe it's just like they say, "It's just boobs, meh." It was actually something of a relief not to be so damn thrilled to be seeing naked boobs that I couldn't carry on a rational conversation.  Also, my friend Kurt never seems to wear underpants.  I could have gone at least several more hours without witnessing The Spectacle(TM).

And how about our national spectator sport, voting.  It would seem that nowhere near all of us that are eligible actually participate in government by the people, for the people.  It seems so many have decided, in a practical sense that their participation isn't worth it.  I say, "VOTE like your life depended on it!" because in a sense it really does.

Not nearly as close as the RWEC thought.  Also +29 for FLA when they finally get their third-world voting act together, the n00bs.

Regarding the outcomes, I was pretty pleased that the electorate collectively rejected so much Bad Crap.  Let's make a list of Bad Crap, shall we:

Stupid Ideas That Should Never Be Spoken Of Again 

• Spending nearly infinite sums of money to get a few thousand people who already made up their mind to change their mind is a winning strategy.
• Rape really isn't that bad, and it doesn't cause pregnancy, or if it does, it's a gift from a deity.
• Gays have second class relationships because they are second class.
• Binders full of women!
• Muslim Kenyan Socialists!
• Trickle down economics - SO EFFECTIVE!! (do not pay any attention to the contrary data)
• Karl Rove (holy shit, that dude has some explaining to do)
• Corporations are people, my friend
• Abortion is our nation's biggest problem
• "Contraception" is Kenyan for "Destroying religious freedom!"
• Job creators just need some more money
• MOAR KILLING MACHINES
• Benghazi was a partisan failure
• Sheldon Adelson and The Fabulous Koch Brothers!
• "Our number one legislative priority is making Obama a one-term president."
• Newt!
• Vote suppression is patriotic!
• FOX
• Etch-a-Sketch!!
• The Tea Party
• The Right-Wing Echo Chamber.
• I'm sure I'm forgetting a lot here.

Math is real.  When the pollsters did their work, and the data was analyzed scientifically, the outcome of the election was accurately predicted.  I can only hope that in the next cycle, the GOP does not delude itself so much.  It makes us all look like idiots.

Hmmmm.  Two more of my good friends at work are leaving.  There is a lot of opportunity for me at work but at the same time, there has been a lot of change.  So many people that I liked and respected have moved on.  There is a lot of growth on the horizon, but there is also a lot of much-larger-company culture trickling flowing in.  I can't complain about the commute or the compensation, but what is important and what the people are like has changed a lot in my tenure, several times actually.  Luckily, I have a high tolerance for change.

Apparently, I snore.  Also, I tend to hear song lyrics in most everything people say.  Oh, and boobs.

I *promise* I'll post tomorrow.