Relapse
A little more than 24 hours after telling Dr. ENT he fixed me, I started with a headache and then it turned into a slight buzzing in the left ear, finally moving on to that annoying sort of low frequency muffling thing again. The only explanation I have is that I was slowly clearing the steroids from my system and there was just enough left to hold the inflammation at bay on Wednesday. By Thursday night the levels had decreased to the point where the symptoms reappeared.
The Dr. had told me that if this did reappear that the next step was an MRI to see if I had a callous on the auditory nerve. If in fact that is what it is, they can treat it with something called a Gamma Knife. An all I thought of when they said that was:
So this morning I called Dr. ENT’s office up and said, “It’s baaack.” After some internal consultation over on their end, the Dr called in another round of my old pals the steroids because I can’t get an MRI until the week after next (we’re going on our yearly visit to see the Space Needle.) About 11:30 AM I got a text from the Kroger and it said, “Rx# xxx0151 is on order and will be ready for pickup at 9:22 PM.”
Fast forward to just a few minutes ago, I picked up the phone to call the pharmacy to see if it was ready and that is when I noticed the date, 07-03-17, hey, wait a minute, that’s Monday… The pharmacist at Kroger suggested that I try calling around to see if anyone locally had it and if not I could call ahead to where we are going and see if they can have it ready for when I got there. Several calls later I think I found a hook-up at the 24-Hour CVS over in Augusta near all the hospitals. If they call back pretty soon we may make the drive over tonight.
Oh, boy, another 2 weeks of 800 word blog rambling posts. Lucky you.
I Just Can’t Help Myself
Bought another Blipshift T-shirt. Lucky Number 13 and only the 4th non-Miata T. When I showed it to my wife to make sure I had approval to purchase, she said, “Order me one too.”
We are both early VW lovers. Before we bought our first Miata in 1989 we test drove a last year (1979) Convertible Beetle. Not real sorry we didn’t buy that VW, because how long I might have missed out on the Miata fun, but kind of sorry because it would be neat to have an old Beetle again. Don’t know where we’d put it or even drive it, but those cars have so much character.
Donna’s first car was a 1971 Super Beetle. She shipped it over to me on Guam because I was there first, and even though we weren’t married yet, she even trusted me drive it around until she got there (I had sold my B210 before going over there.) While we there we fell in with a squadron mate who had the VW “bug” bad, so at one point we owned three, her Type I Beetle, I had a Type III Squareback and together we bought a 15-year old Type II commercial bus.
Her car was a sort-of rare semi-automatic 3-speed that for the heck of it, Keith and I converted to a regular 4-speed standard. When we left the island we sold it to another squadron mate who was going to take it back to California when he left Guam in about a year. He was from Santa Barbara and I like to think that car is still tooling around out there.
My Squareback was an Automatic too, but the more conventional kind. It had dual carbs with a glass-pack muffler and I’d just roar around island. Sold it for cheap to another sailor when we came back to the states and I bet that thing turned into a Guam Bomb. Probably the only thing left of that car is a slightly higher aluminum content in a of patch soil a few yards off a weed chocked back road on the south of the island.
The bus is a whole ‘nother post by itself, maybe I’ll save that until tomorrow.
Can I Hear You Now?
My original follow-up with the ENT was scheduled for today, Wednesday, in downtown Augusta. I put in for a 1/2 day vacation because the appointment was at 1:15 and figured Donna and I could make a day of it in the big city, lunch then doctor, maybe see a movie matinee afterwards.
Last week the office called and said, the doctor has a surgery scheduled, could I do Thursday at the Evans office. Reluctantly I agreed because I wanted to get this done. I picked the last appointment of the day, 3:15, so Donna could pick me up from work at 2:30 and I’d take an hour of “lost time.” I cancelled the half day vacation. For this appointment, after the doctor we’d hunt up some different place to eat dinner over that way, because we’d probably never purposely say to ourselves, “Let’s drive over to Evans to eat out on a work night.”
Yesterday afternoon the ENT office called and said that we now have a conflict with Thursday appointment, could I call and change it. I called them back fully expecting to tell them forget the f&*^ing follow-up, my initial complaint has been solved to my satisfaction. But was stunned into silence when the girl asked if I could come to the downtown office today, Wednesday, at say…1:15?1 I asked if they had a later in the day appointment and got one at 3:20 PM so I could just that same hour of excused time.
Well, they tested my hearing again today. I think I am cured, the garbled bass is gone, so the steroids fixed me, but if you look at numbers and compare the two dates, today’s test doesn’t look that much better. And they didn’t test the same frequencies, so much for my planned apples to apples chart. 3khz was added and they dropped the 12khz which is probably where I had the greatest gains. I’m not happy with the chart, but I’m happy with the results of the medicine.
Good News Or Bad News?
Depends on who you ask.
In a weird way, I’m kind of disappointed, but Donna is probably pleased as punch by this development – the effects of my earache induced course of steroids is almost all gone. I slept right through last night, I’ve stopped fidgeting and have regained some control over my ability to stay focused at work. More importantly, I no longer have the compulsion to answer the question of “How’s it going?” by starting out with, “Well, I was born in Springfield, but raised in…”
Also good or bad, you decide, the blog posts will probably be a lot shorter and perhaps less frequent. To prove the point, that’s all I got tonight.
Go read something good: Before the Internet.