good news…make that GREAT

So I had an appointment at the ear doctor’s this morning because a couple of weeks ago when I had a terrible headache for a whole week I went to my regular doctor’s office to see if they could do anything about it.  I saw a different doctor than I normally do and he looked in my ears to see if there was anything wrong that might be causing the headache.  He looked in my left ear first and said, “Whoa.  What’s going on here?”  Ummm….not what you’d like to hear from your doctor as they are poking around with their otoscope.  I’ve had 2 ear surgeries performed on that ear because I had a perforation in my ear drum during a particularly bad ear infection during college.  Which the student health center failed to correctly diagnose me with.  So the infection went on and on until finally on about my 4th trip to the health center I saw a doctor whose husband happened to be an ENT doc and she recognized the perforation immediately.  Anyway, I ended up needing surgery – the first one didn’t take – so I was sent to a specialist the next summer to have the surgery again.  This was back in 2002/2003.  The surgery is only day surgery, but it is not fun.  I had to wear a bandage around my head for several days and have packing in my ear (making me completely deaf on that side) for about a month.

Bringing us back to the tale at hand though – when the doctor asked what was going on with that ear I replied, “I’ve had 2 tympanoplasties (the type of ear surgery I had) on it.  Does it look bad?”  He said he couldn’t see an ear drum at all!!!  He immediately put in the referral for me to see a specialist here in town.  So for 2 weeks now I’ve been at a moderate rate of panic whenever I think about my dumb ear.  I was positive that I would have to have surgery again.  And every little thing I felt in my ear seemed really dramatic.  And to be honest, I’ve wondered about it for a long time (like over a year) just because it does feel differently from my other ear and I do have some loss of hearing in it.  So, I’ve been thinking about when I could schedule surgery and even earmarking some of PTO days for it (I said that to my boss and mom this afternoon and they both laughed – I hadn’t even realized my pun.).

So this morning I go to see the specialist and am totally nervous.  And completely sure that he’ll be scheduling me for surgery within the next month.  He comes in, checks both of my ears, and tells me that the good news is that he sees my ear drum and there is no perforation.  He says it just looks like a post operative ear drum and those look kind of different so that was probably the only reason for confusion from the other doctor I saw.  In fact the only issue he saw was that both of my ears are pretty waxy and gave me a little paper on how to take care of that issue.  I could not believe what I was hearing.  I’ll take stupid old waxy ears over surgery anyday!  (As I’m sure most people would.)  I cannot tell you the relief I felt from this news.  I almost wanted to run out of the office in case he was just teasing me and told me something different if I hung around too long.  On the drive back to the office I was smiling like an idiot and actually clapped my hands.  I was by myself and people probably thought I was nuts.  Oh well.

So now I’ve got those 5 earmarked PTO days that I’ve got to use before the end of June.  Hmmm…what to do, what to do?

really really random

I stayed home from work yesterday due to a really weird and horrible headache.  I’ve still got it today but was able to make it into work.  I don’t feel very sick otherwise except for a bit of a dry cough.  I have a feeling it could be a tension headache acting up.  I had one last summer for a week straight and took every type of medicine to figure out what it was, but in the end saw the nurser practitioner and she figured out that it was due to the way I hold my head at work (on the computer and answering the phone) and while I’m driving.  Anyway, whatever it is due to, I’m ready for it to be gone.

Overall today has been a bit on the different side.  Don’t worry…nothing crazy or exciting!  Just really random things.  Like I found a hole in my jeans in a place you’d rather not have one.  Luckily it isn’t noticeable except to me, but I’m ready to get home and change the pants before I flash my undies to some stranger.

And the girl at Port of Subs (my all time favorite place for lunch) asked if I had died my hair (which I did a couple of weeks ago) and she told me it was “really really pretty”.  Which was very nice of her and kind of made my afternoon.

And after quite a few weeks of really good or at least decent weather it is suddenly doing this slushy/sleety/snow thing that is annoying.  After the winter we’ve had this year I am SO ready for spring.  And normally I get annoyed with the summer when it is too hot (having grown up in AK), but I promise that I will not complain once about it being too hot this coming summer.  And if I do I give you full permission to pinch me.  Because seriously this cold stuff is for the birds.

And as a follow up to my last post – I did one of the exercises Marta had posted on Monday.  And I’ve decided that for my Lent “resolution” I’m going to fill up the notebook I started using all the way.  Before Easter.  Yikes, I’d better get going.