ENT

Mr. Meniere Makes A Visit

Sunday morning I woke up at 5:30. I was lying on my side facing the alarm clock and when I opened my eyes the image I saw spun quickly up and repeated and repeated and repeated…so I blinked a couple times, but it wouldn’t stop. I closed my eyes and decided that maybe if I rolled onto my back that would help. Trouble came about when I started to roll over I opened my eyes! I can only equate the visuals to what I imagine is a portion of a potent LSD trip. Once on my back the ceiling fan was scanning across my vision rapidly from left to right.

I closed my eyes and lay there for a few minutes contemplating. I knew what it was, it was the one symptom of Meniere’s Disease that I hadn’t suffered from back in September — vertigo. With experimentation I found that I could make it stop by jamming my eyeballs all the way to the right (direction everything was spinning.) I then woke Donna and told her what was happening. She wanted to know what we should do and I told her the first thing was I needed to go to the bathroom. Using a combination of eyes closed, eyes opened hard to the right and her supporting me, mission accomplished.

It was still early, so I suggested let’s go back to bed and see where we are when we next wake up. I woke up again at 7:30 and I was lying on my side facing the alarm clock. When I opened my eyes the image was perfectly still. I blinked my eyes a couple of times, normal. I closed them for a minute or so and opened back up to the return of ordinary. There hasn’t been a return of the dizziness since.

I’ve given up caffeine as the doctor suggested, so was it the small coffee in the morning and the 20oz. Dr. Pepper in the evening on Saturday? Was it the 300 mile road trip, more than half of it with the top down that brought it on? The pizza in Milledgeville? The glass of wine with dinner? Not getting a lot of sleep two nights before? Watching the synchronized drones of the Olympic’s Closing Ceremony?

I Guess I Better Get Used To It

Not My HeadRemember in our last episode where I complained that the caffeine-free Diet Dr. Pepper tasted different? Well, I’m going to try and get used to it.

The first time the ENT treated my wonky hearing for was inflammation. The steroids he gave me (twice) fixed it, but not permanently. The next possibility was callousing on the nerve instead of just inflammation and to find that we needed an MRI. A couple weeks ago, I laid on a table and had a nice young woman blast me with loud noises and magnetic rays.

My head scans came back normal, so the doctor came to the conclusion that I have a form of Meniere’s Disease. It’s a “form of” because I do have the on again off again hearing issues, but I don’t have any of the vertigo (thank goodness.)

I was given a few dietary things to avoid which might reduce my symptoms: alcohol and excessive sodium. Oh, and caffeine too. So as soon as I run out of the current stock of Dr. Pepper it will be replenished with the caffeine free stuff. Same goes for the Dunkin Donuts coffee. The sodium is another story, that stuff is stuck in everything. We really don’t use salt much, so the first thing will be to cut out the frozen microwave dinners that I have for lunch every day. After that, I got no idea. I don’t consider one glass of wine a night excessive, so that’s staying.

Mother Would Be So Proud II

On Friday I did something that my mother would routinely tell me to do after I did some sort of stupid thing or another while growing up – I had my head examined.

Remember the earache steroid episode from back in June/July? Well, after the doctor ordered the second round of steroids to clear hearing issue he also scheduled an MRI. Two weeks after finishing the steroids and a week before the MRI my hearing is fine so I think I’ll just call off the scan. But I waited another 6 days, until the day before, to call and cancel.

Wouldn’t you know it, but on the way home from work on the Friday the MRI was scheduled for the left ear acts up again. Not only that, it sort of sounds like the right ear going a little wonky too. Naturally by the time I get home and call on a Friday everyone has gone home for the weekend.

I called the imaging place on Monday and ask if I can reinstate the MRI appointment that I had cancelled on Thursday. The nice lady said that she’d be happy to reschedule me. But – uh oh – it looks like the Southside Imaging Center’s MRI machine was down for maintenance. I asked, “Well when will it fixed?” “November,” she says. “You can have the scan done at the hospital,” she says, “They have an MRI machine.” “Great,” I say. “Let’s see when I can get you in…” “How about September 1st?” It is now the third week of July. “Wow,” I say, “If that is as soon as I can get in, I’ll take it.”

The left ear has been good and bad, off and on ever since. The last few days it has seemed fine, so does that mean the MRI won’t see anything up with the auditory nerve? But more importantly will they be able to locate the source inside the brain that causes me to do those stupid things or anothers?

Here is Part 1 of Mother Would Be So Proud from 2006.

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.

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.

I’m Juicing

or ENT Update

I kept my Ear, Nose & Throat appointment last week. Because I was complaining of the hearing diminishing in my left ear, the first thing they wanted was a hearing test. The Audiologist takes a peek inside the left, goes, “Hmmm.” Takes look in the right and goes, “I’m going to send you back to the doctor, you’ve got some wax build-up in that needs to come out.

I go back down the hall and wait again for DR. Ent to come back. When he returns he looks and says you have no issue in the right ear? “Well, I think it is OK, but maybe that is because the left is so wacky.” He goes, “All right hold still, there is going to be a little tug.” So he puts one hand on the side of the my head to steady me, with another hand he pushes some sort of reverse spreading forceps and with his third hand he reaches in with the pliers and wiggles and wiggle and yanks. “Wow, look at that,” as he shows it to me. My first thought was, “That looks like a giant bacon bit.” Guess I won’t be eating salad for lunch today,” he retorts.

I go back down the hall and wait on the bench for the hearing test. Now, a local hospital comes out to the the valve store every year to test the hearing of everyone works in the machining areas to keep track if anyone is going deaf and evaluate what sort of protection they should be using. So I’m used to the testing process. Sit in a little room with a headphones on, press a button every time you still hear the sound. I get in the booth, I get the headphones. I don’t get a button and I don’t see one hanging anywhere. I don’t ask (would she hear me I’m in a soundproof booth?) I’m just gonna roll with it. Dummy, she’d have heard me, if they can pipe in sound, they can pipe it out, er, ever hear of a microphone Brian?

Turns out you answer yes every time you hear the tone. First one ear, up in tone and down in tone in diminishing volume. “Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes.” After a while I get bored and mix it up, “Yeah, Yesss, YEss, yeSS, Yeaah..” Then bored again and just go back the plain old yeses. There were a couple of places where I quit saying yes so frequently, so I knew there were going to be points of loss. Didn’t stop with the tones either, next up is repeating words back at my tester. First some 2-word phrases: Swimming pool – ironing board – step sister – left field. Then we toss some one worders back at each other through the wall: – ladder – drive – center – phrase – carrot.

Back down the hall to wait on the doctor again. He shows me my little chart. The right ear was pretty good until 12kHZ then dropped off, the left had a small drop at the lowest point, hovered OK, and plummeted at i12kHz. Diagnosis, probable Inflammatory Audio Nerve. The nerve runs through a bony canal from the the ear to the brain, and when it gets swoll’ up (as we say in the south) the nerve presses the bone walls and rubs on there and gets damaged. If caught in the first couple of weeks, they prescribe steroids to reduce the swelling and hopefully things return to as before.

I’m about halfway through a 10-day diminishing dose of Dex-something-or-other and I think I’m doing pretty good. the muddiness is gone and it seems like I’m hearing about like I was. The thing with the steroids is they kind of build up, the first few days on the high doses they didn’t bother me much, but today they kicked in, I was wired all day at work. And as you can tell from the length of this missive I’m still flying along.

Because of the hearing test at work and now a real doctor one I wanted to mash them up and see what the numbers were like compared to last October and now. Probably should have waited until now to try because the steroids might have helped. It took me a couple hours of monkeying with excel over the weekend to come up with the following, but I’m not too sure it is clear enough to convey just anything but colorful stalagmites.

The two tests don’t test all the same frequencies. Four color bars is where they coincide, if you see just two hangers that is only one test. The doctor’s test did the two extremes and work one tested more of the middle frequencies. Blue is right ear, red is the left. I go back on the 29th, so maybe I’ll be able to compare apples to apples then.

Try and contain your excitement.