POP! goes the tympanic membrane

While Mo was playing tour guide to my parents, who flew in from the East Coast for a lightning fast trip to Vegas and the Bay, I was left in Berkeley attempting to cram for the Physics CSET test that I was scheduled to take on Saturday. After seeing everyone to the airport on Thursday morning I was ready to settle in for a couple days of quiet, focused studying when my left inner ear canal began inexplicably filling up with fluid Thursday night. The pain kept me up all night on Thursday and drove me to the doctor on Friday, who prescribed antibiotics and said that I had quite a royal ear infection raging in there. Argck.

Unfortunately the doctor didn't send me home with any pain killers, and I was forced to alternate between Tylenol and Advil in an attempt to stave off the ferocious, sharp, awl like pain going straight into my skull. Friday evening I laid in the fetal position on the couch as I didn't think the pain could get any worse, trying to keep my body as still as I could as every single movement jostled the pressure in my ear and caused it to intensify. I began wishing that my ear drum would just burst and I was imagining the immediate theoretical cessation of pain as the fluid found its way out of my skull. And then, while I talked (or really moaned and complained grumpily) on the phone to Mo in Vegas, it happened - my ear drum ruptured, the pain immediately stopped, and fluid began oozing out of my ear canal.

While it was a short-term solution to the indescribable pain I was experiencing at the time, if I had to do it all over again with the hindsight that the last week has provided, I probably wouldn't have wished quite so hard that my eardrum would pop. While the pain and pressure immediately dispersed, so did my hearing, as well as many other senses and neurological nuances that are evidently connected to having an intact tympanic membrane. For over one week now I have not been able to hear anything out of my left ear, and most of the time there is an annoying ringing taking place where audio input should be. My sense of balance is getting better, but for the first few days it was nearly impossible for me to close my eyes and remain standing without falling over. And one of the most annoying repercussions of my condition is the inability to audio-locate where noises are coming from. In order to determine the location of a source of noise, our brain uses an algorithm that compares the gap in reception time between our two ears - put simply, if the right ear hears a noise before the left ear, then the brain can figure out that the source of the noise must be on our right size. When the brain is only receiving data from one of the ears it can't work its magic anymore, and thus I have no idea where noises are coming from. This in itself is extremely disorienting and annoying, and combined with the ringing it is hard for me to stay upbeat, positive, and not grumpy.

Just a week of this experience has given me a whole new perspective and sympathy for a) young children that have ear infections and go through all this painful mess and b) people with life-long hearing disabilities or loss. My grandpa always complained about how stressful it was for him to go out to dinner in a crowded restaurant, or attempt to hold a conversation in a crowded room, and now I have a glimmer of understanding of what he meant. Without both ears working I have lost all ability to filter out the normal din of a populated space, and it requires a lot of brain power to separate what people are saying to you and what is just background conversation around you. I've always put hearing towards the top of my list of most valued senses, and this little medical ordeal has only reinforced that fact.

Mo is back from Vegas, my parents made it safely home to the Carolinas after seeing everything from Sacramento to Santa Cruz, and we are still playing a bit of a waiting game on the job search. The High School in Berkeley has officially offered me a position, and the school in Watsonville is still lagging big time. We hope to come closer to a decision as to where we want to live this weekend, and are excited about working out our summer plans which hopefully include a trip to Zion for a wedding and fun, and there is talk about a possible family ascent up The Capitan(!). Meanwhile, the Interweb says healing time of anywhere from a few weeks to a few months for a popped ear drum, so I am hoping recovery comes sooner rather than latter, although in truth I might miss the convenience of selective hearing loss when this is all over.

What?

-Mat