Now Ear This

Happy Easter. Sorry for the relative slowdown, here, but it’s been a busy several days, and I’ve been having some trouble with my ear.

As I’ve discussed here many times, I have a long history of doing terrible things to my ears. When I was a kid, I was prone to ear infections, which were capable of being incredibly painful. My mother recounted one instance wherein, as a very young lad, my eardrum was punctured and I literally passed out from the pain. As a petulant teen and, later, smug twentysomething convinced of his own imperviousness, I routinely listened to my headphones at the maximum volume and attended far too many high-octane rock shows without wearing any semblance of hearing protection. Not wise. 

Then, one bright morning in October of 1999 (just days before my now-very-distant 32nd birthday), I woke up with tinnitus screaming in my right year, a clarion ring that has never, ever abated. As a hilariously little side-dish, my hearing has been significantly diminished in the OTHER ear (the one without the ringing). I've since acclimated, although I only enjoy a fraction of the sounds I would otherwise be experiencing. Earlier this week, however, my right ear (the one with the ring) was feeling inexplicably stopped up, so I rather foolhardily applied two ear drops into that tiny, labyrinthine chamber of horror. The trouble is, they evidently didn't drain properly and now the compromise is worse than before (nice job, eh?) I'm disinclined to fish around in there any further.

So, after several days of bitching about it, I took my problem to a professional. I'm (sorta) happy to report that the diagnosis from my local Urgent Care was that I have some inflammation in my eustachian tube, which is to say that the problem is in the middle-ear (i.e. behind the drum) and not something in my external ear or ear canal. I was informed that this is likely the result of some allergies, which certainly tracks. I was prescribed a nasal spray called Fluticasone which I'm to administer twice a day.

So, y'know .... watch this space.