Living on the edge with a notebook on my head

I'm sitting at the computer with a notebook balanced flat on my head to remind me to sit still. It's another ploy to defeat the vertigo that drives the waves that set off the crackling in my right ear. Apparently I move my head around a lot and that upsets the ear crystals. It's harder than you might think to stay perfectly upright. Plus it hurts when the notebook slides off my head and hits my hands. As a preteen, I used to mince across the bedroom with a book perched on my head. (It's what girls did in the early 1960s before they got the message that love was free and didn't require poise.) This is not that. Maybe a neck brace would be better. However, I don't happen to have one, and I know from experience, wrapping a long scarf tightly around my neck is not an ideal solution.

Speaking of breathing, yesterday I went for a walk in the park after visiting my sleeping mother. I've avoided the park, mostly, because I want to avoid people. But I'm tired of wandering the neighborhood. I wanted to see my reservoir. I donned my plaid mask like a good citizen, jammed in my mp3 player's ear buds, and hiked into the park. I saw dozens of people, and not one was wearing a mask. Maybe they all feel invincible in the outdoor air? Maybe I'm the overly cautious canary?

Amazingly, no one was on the trail through the trees. I had the 87°F shade all to myself. Early summer is a luscious green season here in Portland. I came down the hill above the tennis courts and saw all three courts occupied with players. No masks, but some nice social distancing going on, okay (nods in approval). When I came out into the sun by the big reservoir, I saw a some people strolling, a few running, but fewer than I had anticipated. I saw not one wearing a mask.

Excuse me, time out while I remove my suddenly chirping smoke detector from the ceiling. I may have ear troubles but I'm not deaf. Oh darn, I don't have a replacement battery. I guess for a few days I'll be living on the edge. Oh well, aren't we all. Hold on while I put the notebook back on my head. There.

Where was I? Oh yeah, walking around the reservoir, contemplating the nature of virus particles. How many times have you passed someone on the street or in the hallway and held your breath so you didn't inhale their perfume? Or their body odor, halitosis, farts, whatever cloud they left in their wake? Come on, you probably do it instinctively. It's a social-dissociative mannerism adopted to help us maintain our personal bubble and the illusion of safety. 

I did the same in the park yesterday. I passed a chubby shirtless tanned man walking his bicycle. I passed a man and woman, obviously a couple, who walked shoulder to shoulder. I passed two young women walking while looking at their phones, ignoring the beautiful reservoir mere feet away. I passed several people walking dogs, singly and in small family groups. After I passed each person or group, I held my breath to avoid inhaling their perfume plumes, covid clouds, and fart mists. 

I walked three times around instead of my usual four because it was getting dark and the wind had kicked up. Low pressure was moving in. I could tell because my vertigo was cranking up. I think I'm going to start a local weather blog. Are you interested in checking the weather in a small region, say, a ten foot diameter circle around me? Great. I'll just access my right ear. Currently, the weather around me is medium crappy. That means, it's not raining, but it's not sunny, either. It's medium crappy. I think tomorrow high pressure will build in and the hiss in my ear will lessen. 

Wow, holding your neck in one position is really hard on the back. Sadly, it doesn't seem to be helping much with the vertigo waves, either. So much for that remedy. My best option is still to immerse my head in a hot tub of water. It's very difficult to do that outside the tub, though. I've tried. Big mess.

Mom sleeps most of the time, less like a napping cat and more like a soon-to-be dead person. When I visit in the evening, she is always sprawled loosely on her couch. Sometimes her mouth is open. Sometimes she twitches. Once she took her life-alert pendant and wrapped the ribbon around her hand quite neatly without opening her eyes. A few times lately, her TV has been on. Last night someone had turned on her air conditioner. 

I talk into the baby monitor: Hi Mom, howdy, Mom, Mom, Mom, wake up, Mom, it's me at the window, look, Mom, it's me. I watch and wait. I try again. Wake up, Sleeping Beauty, Mom, Ma, Ma, Mommy, wake up. Sometimes she'll twitch. Rarely does she open her eyes. Sometimes I sing, but I don't yell. It seems cruel to make her wake up just to entertain me. If I were her, I would prefer to sleep through to the end. I stand at the window, a morose peeping tom, and watch her chest rise and fall. Proof of life.

I cut my mother's hair in the emergency room

On Wednesday morning the light inside my refrigerator burned out with a pop at 6:30 am when I opened the door. Not a good sign, I thought. I was up early, getting ready to cook my breakfast and dash over to the retirement place to pick up my mother and take her to the dermatologist. After several postponements, the day had finally arrived to have the Mohs surgery on her cheek. 

The clinic had previously informed me it could be a day-long ordeal. Accordingly, I packed three bags of gear. One big bag held a pillow and a fleece blanket so she could sleep in between rounds, and a neck pillow for me in case I was lucky enough to catch a snooze leaning back against a wall. The food bag was crammed with Cheerios, almond milk, a dish, a spoon, napkins, coffee in a thermos, two water bottles, and some paper towels. The personal hygiene bag was jammed with a towel, two washcloths, some baby wipes, what few remaining disposable gloves I have left from previous gleanings from the nursing home, a pair of my old cotton knit pants, a pair of socks, and my hair-trimming scissors. I had Chinese food for us both for our lunch: veggie lo mein for me and cashew chicken for her. The only thing I was missing, and possibly the most important thing, were the six pairs of pull-ups. Those, if all went according to plan, would be in the bag I would receive from the nursing home when I arrived to pick up the star of the show, my mother.

I was prepared for eight hours of hell, and it seemed like I might get it. Despite an assist from my brother and his wife, the day didn't start out well. The guardian at the door almost didn't let me into the building to be with her. Once we got up the elevator, I saw the waiting room was roped off, inaccessible. No visitors allowed. I explained to them the incontinence situation. No more needed to be said. They welcomed me in and made room for my four bulging grocery bags. Next, we spent ten minutes cleaning her up in the bathroom. I mean, I spent ten minutes cleaning her up. She wasn't much help, but she did her part: She pooped on command, and that rarely happens. 

After leaving a toxic waste dump in their garbage can (I had the pull-ups but no plastic bags, argh), I'm happy to report: smooth sailing! No more bathroom breaks, no agitation, no complaints . . . and Mom was really calm, too. The skinny young skin doc knew her stuff, wielding that gleaming scalpel with a sure and steady hand. I felt blessed by the skin cancer gods that we got out of there in less than three hours. Miracle! You know how sometimes you prepare and you make all the proper sacrifices and promise to be good if only things will finally go your way . . . and then things do, and you wonder, did I over-prepare? Did I worry needlessly? Was all that existential angst wasted? I'm here to tell you, burning sage and compulsively texting your sponsors really does work! Who knew! 

Mom got sliced, diced, punctured, stitched, packed, reamed, steamed, dry-cleaned, and bandaged. In between rounds, she ate a bowl of Cheerios with good cheer and didn't twitch when the doctor came back to take a little more skin. Everything happened so fast, we didn't have time for me to give her a haircut. She barely had time to finish her cereal. The assistant warned me she would have a shiner tomorrow. Mom grinned. Sporting an enormous bandage from forehead to nose, Mom walked out of there with a swagger, well, almost a swagger, more like a little sashay, and made it easily to the car. 

As I buckled her in, I wondered if I should keep her for a while longer. Who knows when I would get to see her in person again? For the first time in three months, I was able to touch my mother. We sat shoulder to shoulder in my Ford Focus, breathing the same air. (I wore a mask; she let hers dangle below her chin.) Her hair was still falling in her eyes, darn it. Well, maybe they could give her some hair gel or something at the place. I figured it would be best to take her home in time for lunch. I buckled up her seat belt and pointed out the new buildings to her as we drove the streets she used to drive so nonchalantly barely more than five years ago.

At the nursing home, they welcomed her back like family, which she is, really, if you think about it: they see her more than I do. She was sleeping when I visited in the evening. The next day the house call doctor visited her to see how she was doing. I met him in the parking lot after his visit. Blood pressure good, more confusion, but that is to be expected, all in all, thumbs up. Right on, Mom.

This morning I get a call from the nursing home: She won't wake up. They are sending her to Providence ER. I drive to Providence ER. No mom. Lost in transit, it seems. Done a bunk? Gone fishing? No, they took her to Adventist ER, three blocks from her nursing home. In case you are wondering, even in a pandemic when everyone is supposed to be staying home, it takes twenty-three minutes to drive five miles in SE Portland. As I'm driving, I'm thinking, what if she died and I missed it because I was at the wrong ER? Would that be a good thing or a bad thing?

I arrived. I passed the temperature check, got my hall pass, and found her alert and talking in a cubicle in the ER. I was late. The doctor had come and gone. The nurse told me a few things. Pretty soon, the CT scan tech whisked her away. Ten minutes later, she was back. As soon as she was layered with heated blankets, she went to sleep. I thought, should she be sleeping? Then I thought, if she's dying, she'd probably rather sleep through it. The bandage was gone from her cheek. I could see the oozy stitches. She looked like she'd gone ten rounds in the ring.

She woke up after a while, yelling for a bed pan. The feisty mother was back. As we waited for the test results, I did everything I could think of to keep her entertained. I turned on the television. I showed her photos on my phone, look there a kitty, look there's another kitty, there's a duck on the reservoir. Every five minutes: "When can I get out of here?" I was exhausted and she was just revving up. I don't know how parents do it. In my defense, I was extremely hungry and thirsty and needed a bathroom.

"Why are you wearing all black?" Mom asked me. "Do you think it will keep away the . . . ?"

"The virus?" 

"Yeah, the virus."

"If only it were that easy," I said, and the nurse laughed. "We'd all be dressing like Johnny Cash!"

"I'm trying to remember what happened," Mom said after the nurse left. 

"This morning?"

"Yeah, and when I went to the eye doctor."

"You mean the skin doctor?"

She pointed to her eye. "That thing."

"They took that sore off your cheek."

"I tried to tell them to leave me alone."

"This morning?"

"Yeah. I could hear them. And then they were putting me on the stretcher."

"They couldn't get you to wake up. You were half-awake and half-asleep, sounds like."

She pointed her finger at me. "Bingo."

"Hey, let me cut your hair," I said, grabbing a pair of bandage scissors that were next to the sink. She didn't protest, so I leaned in and started whacking off hunks of wiry gray hair. She laughed. I couldn't do much but the front and sides, but she didn't look too bad after a few careless chops, considering I don't know how to cut hair. We left some hair on the pillow. Oh well. Something to remember us by.

Four hours after she arrived, the ER doctor came in and said he didn't know what had happened. All the tests were fine, and she was free to go. I signed the paperwork. I helped her get dressed, and the nurse took out the IV in her arm. In that order. I wheeled her outside, brought my car around, buckled her in, and drove the three blocks to the nursing home. They met her at the door with big smiles. Someone brought her walker and helped her totter inside. I naturally was not allowed in the building. Unclean. No time to say good-bye. I drove toward home, thinking of breakfast. My phone rang as I was halfway home. 

"Did she have any paperwork?"

I drove back and gave the paperwork to the nurse. 

Tonight I drove back over there, because that is my commitment to my mother, no matter what. She was asleep on the couch, as usual. I could hear her breathing through the baby monitor. I peered at her from outside her window for a few minutes, thinking how lucky I was to see her in person twice in one week. Maybe those crystals really do work. 

What to do about vertigo and ear crackling

If you clicked on this link in the desperate hope of finding a solution to the ear crackling torture that is keeping you awake at night, you've come to the right place. If you didn't, skip the next few paragraphs. Let me just get this out of the way for all you folks who are on the verge of shoving a pencil in your ears to get some peace and quiet. 

Here's what I discovered today after a week of hell. First, I assume you have vertigo. As you know, vertigo is the result of ear crystals shaking loose and wandering into parts of your ear canal where they don't belong. The antics of those wayward crystals will really make you appreciate that there is fluid in your ears. You will feel actual waves rolling through your head. If you happen to have vertigo and then are unfortunate enough to get an ear infection, which happens to me sometimes in spring allergy season, that infection can cause ear crackling. Guess what I discovered today: The ear crackling responds to the waves of fluid you feel moving in your head when you have vertigo. Treat the vertigo, and you treat the ear crackling. There. Go do the Epley Maneuver on your head and feel better. You are welcome.

Here's my backstory, thanks for asking. Again, skip ahead if you've heard all this before. I've had garden variety vertigo for about six years, I believe from bumping my head on the door jamb of my mother's old green Toyota. Some time after I first got the vertigo, I started hearing a loud crackling noise in my right ear. I thought the noise was related to the vertigo but I couldn't find any information on it. Novice that I was to the off-balance experience, I freaked and went to an ENT, who couldn't hear the noise and clearly thought I was mental. He put me in the gravity chair, whirled me around, and sent me on my way with a recommendation to take antihistamines and stop whining. After a few months of misery, summer came, the ear infection cleared up, and the ear crackling finally went away. The vertigo has remained. We have a truce.

Say, is it okay to resume my self-obsession? I forgot to ask. I'm not qualified to write about anything but myself, and even that is iffy. If you are hoping for an essay on current events, sorry, I've resumed my normal position, that is, with my attention laser-focused on my own parched existence.

Back to my story. A week ago my right ear began to spit and hiss and soon was crackling merrily like a New Year's Eve noisemaker. Zzzz, zzzz, zzzz. I could get it to go faster by leaning my head forward or backward but the only way I could get it to stop completely was by immersing my head in a tub of hot bathwater, which I always do before bed. I mean, I immerse my whole body, not just my head, that is to say, I take a bath. It helps me sleep. So for a few blessed minutes, the ear crackling stops and I enjoy pure silence, except for the unnerving sound of my erratically beating heart (am I having a heart attack? what is my heart doing? If I'm having a heart attack, I'd rather not hear it, please). Each night, grateful for the quiet in my right ear, I have survived my fear of a heart attack. Inevitably, though, I have to get out of the tub. As soon as I lay down in bed, the crackling cranks up. With all that racket, it's almost impossible to sleep.

I have tried everything I can think of, like I said in my previous post, short of sacrificing a chicken. Here are the remedies I have tried in addition to the hot bath head immersion: sipping warm coffee, sipping warm tea, leaning to one side, leaning forward and backward, blowing my nose, popping my ears, leaning over a pan of boiling water with a towel over my head, jumping repeatedly in one place, taking an allergy pill, spraying two kinds of nasal spray in my right nostril, rinsing my nose with the neti pot, squirting an earwax removal remedy in my ear, wrapping a scarf around my head with a hot pack of microwaved rice strapped against my right ear, eating hot soup, eating hot oatmeal, pouring a mix of alcohol and white vinegar in my ear, putting a vibrator my head, and banging my head on a pillow.  

Today I did a little reflection. You know I'm an analytical kind of gal, or if you don't know that about me, now you do. I thought, this ear crackling can't be a random diss from the universe. What could account for the way the crackling crackles? Sometimes it's a fast sequence of pops, like the noisemaker. Other times it pops and hisses and spits with more space in between. I can get it to speed up and change tone by bending over, so it seems gravity affects the crackling. Why does it stop when my head is immersed in hot water? There is some kind of rhythm at work here, but it isn't affected by my heart rate or breathing. 

Finally it dawned on me. It's the vertigo. The waves of vertigo that I hardly pay attention to anymore are crashing through my head and setting off the crackling. Once that theory occurred to me, it wasn't hard to start paying attention to the vertigo, and sure enough, they were related. Like waves crashing on the shore, only in this case, crackling on the shore.

I immediately performed the Epley on my right ear and enjoyed fifteen minutes of silence. It was a miracle. Maybe there is a god. It didn't last, but my good mood did. Now I know this annoying noise is not random. It's not personal. It's not me winning the reverse lottery. It has a rational cause.

Vertigo for me is affected by gravity, movement, low air pressure, temperature, and stress. All those things are working on me in the spring. Gravity and movement, check. I can't avoid gravity, and I rarely stop moving, even at night. I'm up and down several times depending on how much tea I've had. So, yep, gravity and movement. Let's see. We had a tornado yesterday so air pressure is definitely a factor. Plus, our temperature is ten degrees below normal for this time of year. So that leaves stress. Am I stressed? I have discovered that I vibrate when I'm on the phone. Who knew. Now I know. Vibration sets off ear waves, which cranks up the crackling and makes me completely insane. So maybe I am mental. Huh.

On Wednesday if all goes according to plan, I'm taking the maternal parental unit to the dermatologist to get her face scraped and repaired. It's an all-day ordeal. I'm bringing everything. Literally.

I can't help remembering taking my senior cat to get his ears cleaned. Two days later he was dead. Mothers aren't cats, I know, but we love them both the same.

Exit-seeking, stage right

These days it seems as if the only words I find are platitudes: When it rains it pours. Well, it's either feast or famine. Well, you know, if it's not this, it would be something else. Sometimes you are the windshield . . . har, har, har. So far in 2020, I'm definitely not the windshield. I thought I'd melt from sadness when my cat died in January. Then along came the Covid, followed by the protests. Big stuff, hard stuff. Now guess who's back? My vertigo. And along with the vertigo, an unwelcome pest I had hoped never to hear again—the incessant ear clicking. The jack hammer in my head is going at it like flash bang grenades down at the Justice Center. I'm currently seeking the nearest exit, which right now is looking like a sharp pencil in my right ear. 

Yesterday I visited Mom as usual, lurking outside her apartment window in the azalea bush, waving at her and holding up signs. It's plenty warm enough to have the window open, but last week I got read the riot act by the Med Aide on duty. The window was open one inch but even standing at the window, Mom couldn't hear me. I pulled my mask down so she could see my lips. “Did you have some ice cream?” I called. At that moment, the Med Aide came in the room.

“No more open window!” she shouted, hustling over to my mother.

“Where are her hearing aids?” I yelled back. “She wants ice cream!”

The Med Aide looked around in confusion and found them. “Oh, the caregiver must have forgotten to put them back after her shower.” She sat Mom down on the couch and inserted the hearing aids into Mom's ears. She stood up to leave.

 I yelled, “Close the window! And get some ice cream!”

So yesterday evening, I visited Mom as usual and brought my little sketchpad of prepared signs and a felt-tipped Sharpie in case I needed to write some more. She came to the window to open it. I held up a sign explaining that we can't open the window because we are trying to keep all the old folks safe from germs. She shrugged. Who cares. She lost interest and went back to sit on the couch. Her dinner looked barely touched. I yelled, “I love you!” through the window. She gave me two peace signs, and I left.

Shortly after I got home, my phone rang in the special tone: Trouble. Oh dear, I thought. Did she fall? Did she crack her head open? Is she dead? Is this over?

“Today your mother went out the front door.” Same Med Aide.

“Uh-oh,” I said, thinking, right on, Ma.

“Yeah, she was very angry and combative. And she didn't have her walker. She made it outside but one of the staff was outside walking with another resident. She stopped your mother and brought her back inside.”

This news was a blow but not a surprise. A few nights ago, the nurse had told me, Mom was up early in the morning, making a run for the front door. Mom said she had to go home. My sister is my witness. We were video chatting when the nurse called. 

Looks like I'm not the only one looking for a way out. Poor old Ma. My next thought: poor old me. 

We come up with remedies to cope with our problems. To remedy the Geiger counter in my ear, I'm just about ready to call the witch doctor and sacrifice a chicken. I've tried everything short of personally performing aural surgery with a sharp stick. For a few minutes, usually after eating, the clicks fade and diminish. I don't know if that means the ear infection is easing or if I'm going deaf in my right ear or if I should just keep eating and never stop. At this point, I don't care. I'd do just about anything to keep the blessed silence. 

In Mom's case, the remedies are lame, because the underlying problem is she is going to die. There's no solution to that problem. We redirect. We cajole. Well, we don't actually do anything, because we don't get to see her anymore except from outside her window, like she's a fish in a tank. The care staff at the nursing home are her family now. They know her better than I do. I see her for two minutes every evening. I don't see her in the middle of the night bolting for the front door, yelling that she has to go home.

All we can do is agree to put a Lo-Jack on her and let her go down swinging.