Stick It In Your Ear

Oh blog friends...

You know things are just not good in my world when there is nothing here on the 15th. Today is Battle of the Bands and I just cannot do it.

Remember in my last post the explanation about the hurricane, migraines, and the barometer? Well, that is all true, but it turns out that it wasn't the problem. Or the biggest part of the problem. I didn't go into the fact that I was also experiencing occasional dizziness (and I don't mean absentmindedness). It happens sometimes, and I know it's because of my vestibular function loss. If I just lost you, I shall take a moment to explain.

I only have 30% vestibular function in each ear. The doctors don't know how I lost it, but are all pretty certain it's not coming back, and I could lose more (depending on how I lost it in the first place... which remains unclear). It has nothing to do with my hearing. I hear just fine. It has everything to do with finding myself in space. Orientation. Hence the dizziness. When I was first diagnosed I was super dizzy (holding onto walls dizzy, the room was spinning all the time dizzy, a really bad drunk dizzy). After a year of rehab (yep, there's rehab for this), the body learns to compensate for the loss. The rehab mostly consisted of making myself more dizzy in a controlled environment on purpose to make my body learn to deal with it (super fun!). Anyway, pre-hurricane I was experiencing the dizzy again in waves. But, that happens on occasion... especially when the migraines are bad. I guess because it's harder to compensate??? Anyway, I didn't put the puzzle pieces together correctly.

What was actually causing the dizzy, you ask? An inner ear infection. I'd never had one before, so I didn't know the signs. On Monday night (in the middle of the night) my left ear popped, rather painfully, waking me up. I lived in denial about it all day Tuesday hoping it would just miraculously get better. By Wednesday morning, reality set in. I won't relay the horror story of the doctor appointment, but I'm now on antibiotics.

Here's the thing, though... I take my last pill on Saturday morning. That would be ten days worth. I've had plenty of sinus infections, strep throat, bronchitis, and even pneumonia (though I shouldn't count that because ten days of antibiotics didn't knock it out, either). So, with everything but the pneumonia, I was feeling ever so much better around day four. Usually by today (day eight) I'm struggling to remember to take the darn things. I'm still hyper aware of my left ear (and sometimes my right), still struggling with very frequent dizziness, and my spidey sense says that infection is NOT gone. So, I called the doctor's office and was told to come in first thing Monday morning if I still felt that way (which I feel fairly confident I will given the current course).

I tell you all of that to explain why my computer presence has sucked so hard for so long. I'm freakin' dizzy. Scrolling on the computer knocks me down. Writing this post is turning my stomach. I hope that this situation turns around so that I can visit your blogs and vote on your battles. If you would, pray for me. I do believe I need it.