My Ear is Broken. Sigh…

I’m in the process of creating a more optimistic, upbeat post but couldn’t get started with that until I vented about my ear issues again. I’ll pour my heart out here and then move on to more positive things.   Last week I wrote about my ear surgery 10 days ago and explained that the surgery was only partially successful. My doctor was able to drill out and remove the bone filler (to which I was having an allergic reaction). Still, he wasn’t able to see well enough to proceed any farther. There was too much bad tissue, swelling and so forth.  He felt it was too risky to continue and decided to pull out and re-assess. He doesn’t know whether my problems are due to the dehiscence (fancy word for hole) in my horizontal semi-circular canal or from the titanium prosthesis he put in place of my stapes or a combination of both.

So the symptoms I have are the same as they were before this most recent surgery. Right now, I am extremely sensitive to noise and even my own voice (sound makes my vision blur!); my balance is out of whack (each time I take a step everything jumps up and down); I have very loud pulsating in my ear, often times the SHHhing noise is accompanied by jingle bell noises in my head;  I get dizzy and sea sick when I turn my head or nod; plus I get ear aches and head aches as my brain tries to deal with all of this! Oh–and you know what?  When I heard that people with this medical condition can hear sound through their bones, I had to find a tuning fork and find out.  Sure enough, when I place the tuning fork on my ankle bone or hip bone I can hear that pitch in my head!! That’s not a useful parlor trick, though, since no one else around you is terribly impressed by that!! 

Obviously, I’m glad to have a doctor who is careful with my hearing and my future.  But I was definitely left with lots of questions on how to get me to a place where I’m living life normally again.  I saw my doctor this past Monday and we’re back to “wait-and-see” as swelling subsides in my ear and he tries to figure out the next step… 

Will he try to remove the prosthesis (bone) that he placed in there last October? If so, will that make a difference to the dehiscence (hole) in my semi-circular canal?  If he takes the drastic measure of “plugging the semi-circular canal” I will go deaf in that ear (permanently) and I will have debilitating vertigo for at least a month. What I have now is tolerable… most of the time, I guess. Well, unless you catch me at a bad time when I feel like I can’t stand this for five more minutes let alone three more months.

In some ways, I’ve had to whittle down life into the bit-sized chunks I can tolerate. Since we love homeschooling, I reserve most of my energy for that. And since I love writing, there’s no question about continuing to write and share here on the blog. It’s a huge positive/plus in my life now that I’m more house-bound. But to make it through the year,  I’ve had to resign or pull back from various volunteer positions I was holding.  Honestly, I don’t feel much guilt about that because life is just too rough (medically).

Whew–well, I feel like I’ve vented enough about all my problems.  Now I’m going to pour some energy into a positive post!!

My other ear posts: