Earache!

I want to do lots of things today, but I'm being really distracted by my ear.

Yes, the one that is capable of hearing, but is all clogged up so that I can't hear anything out of it at all. It's so clogged today that it hurts. 

Well, actually, it pretty much always hurts (since 1973), but it hurts way more than usual. 

Enough that, although I'm not in unbearable pain, it's annoying and distracting, and is driving me to tears. It's causing strange sensations that seem to be acting on nerves somewhere in the area and making tears reflexively appear. Or maybe it's just pressure in the wrong places.

It's driving me crazy.

Crazy enough that I want to find a plunger, put it over my ear and press it in and out to make my ear unclog. Crazy enough that I'm starting to think about long, thin, sharp objects to put in my ear to puncture the eardrum and make it stop! Yes, I know that doing that would hurt a lot. But maybe it would relieve the pressure inside my ear and make it less annoying. Yes, I know that it would destroy my hearing, but I can't hear anything out of that ear anyway, even though my ear (the inside part) can still hear just fine. Yes, I've seen at least 15 doctors about this, and the last one of them (an ENT specialist) informed me that there's nothing wrong with my ear, and then asked me why I couldn't hear out of it!

All the things I planned to do today are getting shoved aside while I do everything I can think of to make it stop. It's bad enough I can't hear out of it, it's bad enough that I have ringing and other noises in my ears, but why does it have to hurt, too? And worse yet, why do doctors treat me as if I'm an idiot and imagining the problem?

No, I know the answer to that last question. Doctors (with a few exceptions) don't care!  They know you have to pay them anyway, even if they don't bother to do anything for you, and they just plain don't care! They don't care if they cause harm or even kill you, as long as they get paid and you don't sue.

A list of things that doctors have told me or someone I know was their imaginations includes (but is not limited to:

* Sinus Infection

* Really bad allergies

* Cancer (this includes a tumor the size of a watermelon!)

* Adhesions

* Leukemia

* Labor(!)

* And more

I wish you a better day than I'm having, and enjoy Lost tonight!

And the Verdict Is...

Bronchitis, Acute

Sinusitis, Acute

Otitis Extreme, Acute

Or: bronchitis, sinus infection, and a bad earache. They didn't mention the throat that looks like raw meat, or the headache, muscle aches, joint pain or the rest of it.

They made me wear a mask because I was coughing, and the doctor said he noticed immediately how swollen my face was over the affected sinus (in spite of the mask).

When I expressed my concern to the doctor that I might have Strep throat, he said "Oh, it doesn't matter. What I'm prescribing will kill anything."

I woke up about 3:30 this morning and thought the side of my head was going to explode. As the doctor expressed it, "Your ear is very swollen." The problem with that is that it's got no space to swell up. Hence, PAIN!

I came home with a pile of medicine, which I'm taking, and I'm going back to bed.

I am told I will feel much better in a couple of days.

My bank account is $100 poorer, though.

The SciFi Channel has taken Charlie Jade off it's schedule for tonight and the foreseeable future. I hope you've had a chance to see Jake 2.0 all day, and then there's Doctor Who tonight.

I hope your weekend is better than mine is shaping up to be.

Happy first day of Summer!