Three Days Later

(November 19, 2008)

I'm writing from a haze of painkillers and antibiotics, so forgive the lack of fancy prose. I've been through the wringer, dudes.

Continuing from the last entry, pretty much...

Friday morning, I woke up and went to work, stayed just long enough to get done the urgent things I needed to get done, albeit a bit shakily and sleep-deprived, then went home.

I planned on some sleep.

I couldn't sleep.

Too much ear pain. The doc who'd given me the antibiotic had said "take aspirin and a decongestant, like Sudafed." But no amount of aspirin, Advil or Sudafed was doing a single thing to alleviate the intense ear pain. Blessed moments of comparative relief came when I would press a warm mug of boiled water against my ear, but it was fleeting. Steady, relentless pain, redness and swelling.

I spent a fitful Saturday alternating heat and ice, whimpering and taking too many Advils and wishing for relief. The whole day went by like that, and Joe went to bed around midnight. I stayed on the couch because I thought sitting up was less painful than laying flat. Around 4am, I realized with a jolt something important. That the cough (due to Tracheitis) was gone completely.

No more cough. It was day three of the five-day cycle, the cough was gone, meaning the antibiotic was working for that symptom. But the earache was, if anything, twice as bad.

If antibiotics had not cleared it up, what in bloody hell was I waiting for? I got up to get dressed.

"Baby," I whispered into Joe's ear as he slept. He had not woken up while I'd moved about the dark bedroom finding sweat pants, a bra, my shoes. But I couldn't leave without waking him.

"Mmmm."

"You don't have to get up, and don't worry, but I'm going over to the emergency room at St. E's so they can look at my ear."

"OH baby. Should I come with you?"

I didn't see a point in him coming with me. He was half asleep, he doesn't do well in hospitals, and the most I expected was to have a crappy exam by an exhausted overnight doctor that would culminate in a different kind of antibiotic than what I was already taking, and a hearty knock-me-out-please painkiller. I figured I'd be back in a few hours.

Comm Ave was totally silent in the predawn, and I had to actually knock on the window glass to wake up the cab driver on the stand at the corner.

I can get into more detail later, but basically at St. E's they triage'd me straight through. My check-in time was 5:05 and by 7am I was hooked up to an IV and mainlining SUCH a powerful antibiotic that you can only get it once or it'll damage your kidneys, plus some amazing, wonderful morphine.

Lovely, lovely morphine. Thank you Dr. Liang with your cheerful bedside maner and your prescription powers. I slept for the first time in days.

Around 9am (the clock was right in front of me and practically all there was to look at) I woke up enough to have the following conversation with another doctor whose name I didn't catch.

"Now you'll need these antibiotics by intravenous three more times today. You can go, but you'll have to come back. Can you come back? And in between doses you'll have to check your vitals. Can you also come back tomorrow so we can check your progress?"

Something like that. Come back how many times? Check my vitals? What passed through my mind was the punchline of that TV commercial with the guy holding a butter knife to his chest while his doctor gave him cutting instructions over the phone.

"Um...shouldn't YOU be doing that?" I didn't say that though. I asked something about how many hours in between the morphine and antibiotic and vitals checking. He went away.

"Who WAS that guy?" I mumbled aloud. The giant dough-faced drug addict in the next bed said something, but I haven't been able to hear for days and missed what she said.

The next thing I remember is the triage nurse coming back to tuck a warm (I mean it was HEATED) blanket around me and say they will be taking me upstairs to a room soon.

Short version: Two night stay, CT scan, blood tests, specialist.

I am home now, my ear pain is being controlled by a milder prescription, and antibiotic, and ear drops. I have to see the specialist on Friday morning and an audiologist on Tuesday.

Can you believe it?

Most people would just get an earache and take an aspirin to feel better.

Me, I landed in the hospital. Oh and I can barely hear right now, so yeah, I'm hoping that's just a passing symptom, because losing any percentage of hearing would suck a lot.