Today, at last, the happy day of my doctor's appointment, and as all happy days do, this day dawned bright and clear. My main concern was that I should make it to the doctor's office without driving my car up on a curb or taking out someone's brand new Prius. My mother was supposed to be on standby to give me a ride if the ocean in my head turned stormy.
Luckily, I felt pretty okay, calm inner seas. I called my mother to notify her that her chauffeur services would not be required. She wasn't home. Later I found out she was out getting her hair cut.I talk to myself a lot. Do you do that? For the past almost two weeks, I've been talking to my inner ear, berating it, begging it to behave, threatening to send it to the doctor. My ear, like all minor-league demi-gods, has responded by laughing. And then swamping my mental boat with 30-foot waves.
I know I'm giving free-agent characteristics to my inner ear, but I've spent so much time talking to it, I'm fairly sure it now has a rudimentary intelligence. If I listen very closely, I can hear it muttering something. Sounds like redrum, redrum. No, I'm kidding. It doesn't say that. I am officially hard of hearing in my right ear, according to the doctor's tuning fork. (I haven't seen a tuning fork since grade school. How cool are tuning forks?) If my ear said anything, I didn't hear it.
The doctor directed me to pinch my nose shut and blow, ten times a day. Apparently, I have a case of airplane ear, my sister says, who is the expert on world travel by plane. Who knew there was a name for that icky pressurized pain? As a special bonus gift from the universe, I also have chronic ear crackling, kind of a soapsuds-in-your-ear sound, which I can hear just fine, oddly enough, considering I'm almost deaf in that ear. I've had that for over a year.
“And you didn't see anybody for it?” the doctor asked, gazing at me quizzically. Subtext: WTF?
“No, I thought I would handle it the way my father handled his physical ailments: by eating 10 maple bars and doing bicep curls with 20-pound dumbbells.”
“And how well did that work out for him?”
“Not so good. He died from a heart problem he could have had fixed.”
I didn't really say that. I thought it, though. I did tell her that my father's cure for everything was to lift weights. She didn't look impressed. No doubt she could tell that I wasn't really following that regimen very closely. She prescribed an antihistamine. Take it for a month, she said. And she wrote a referral to an ENT specialist. I left feeling no less dizzy, but for some reason, much, much better.
I managed to glide through the grocery store, hanging onto the cart like an old lady with a walker, before going home and crashing into bed. In about 30 seconds, the tsunami flooded my brain. The elevator floor fell out, and down I went, going with the flow. Bring it on, I moaned. I waggled my head this way and that, trying the Epley Maneuver in a last ditch effort to wrest control back from my evil inner ear. Let 'er rip, I groaned. Do your worst. I waited until the waves receded to a gentle rocking. Then I went to sleep for two hours.
When I woke up, the fog was lifted. The waves had calmed. The mental boat is still gently rocking while I write this, but now I seem to have found my sea legs. I don't know what happened. Timing, probably. The evil little calcium crystals in my inner ear probably finally dissolved, or moved, or settled down, or whatever the hell they do when they are behaving, and I'm returned to my full upright and locked position. I have no idea what happened today. Any mystery with a happy outcome seems like a miracle. I'm not complaining. Yesterday sucked, and tomorrow may be a repeat of yesterday, but today I won the battle for my equilibrium. Yay me.
