Sick - cont'd

I went to the Doctor on Tuesday morning. My throat was on fire and I needed some relief. Since I had been running a fever, I figured this wasn't going to go away on it's own. So I dropped Sy off at school and waited for the Doctor's office to open.

At our Doctor, if you don't have an appointment you can walk in to be seen and we have learned if you are not first in line, you are there all morning. Lucky for me, I was first in line and first in to an exam room.

The nurse took a strep culture because that's what I thought I had but when the Doctor came in he said the strep test was negative. He looked - nose, ears, mouth and listened to my breathing and coughing. Not in the chest and definitely an ugly looking throat. I'm glad we agreed on that. He prescribed antibiotics and I was done.

I dropped off my scrip and off to work I went.

It started raining during the day and my ears couldn't adjust to the pressure change. By the time I got home, I felt like I was in a tunnel and it was so painful. (I'm sure the few minutes of stress at the pharmacy when they couldn't find my scrip didn't help.) I couldn't swallow and I was really dizzy. So dinner was a bust for me after Roy did a good job on getting it ready.

I put my right ear on the heating pad because it hurt more than the left. And I took a hot shower to see if that would help loosen it up - it didn't. I wound up taking hydrocodone, benadryl and ibuprofen. Not all at the same time but I'm sure they probably overlapped more than the recommended dosage but I cannot describe the pain I was in. It was that bad.

Later in the evening, the benadryl  kick in?? and my right ear got all scratchy and started popping. The scratching and popping lasted about 2 hours. When it was over, I was able to fall asleep. During the night I woke up and my right ear was draining. So I got a tissue and kept dabbing at it while I tried to fall back to sleep. Didn't get back to sleep and the ear kept draining.

When I got up to get ready, I noticed the fluid was bloody and there was a little puss too. Really? Must be a bad infection. I'm glad it's coming out.

I got to work, still draining from that ear. My mom texts me and I tell her about the horrible pain and the drainage. She told me I ruptured my ear drum. Really?  I googled it. Yes, that was exactly what had happened.

So all day, I've been changing out pieces of tissue at the entrance of that ear and Roy got me some cotton balls at the grocery store this afternoon.

Treatment is antibiotics so I'm hoping that the ones I am taking will work for both fixing the infection I have and making sure another doesn't show up. It may take up to 2 months to heal.

I guess I will need to make an appointment with the doctor in a month so he can check the progress. Until then, keep it clean and cover it up during a shower so no water enters the area.

This should be fun. I hope it heals soon.