Under Pressure

I'm not going to subject you to any pictures with this post. I thought about taking a couple, but I was too grossed out to do it.

Tuesday night after dinner, I noticed it felt like I needed to pop my right ear. It didn't really hurt, but it was annoying. I tried all the things I could think of, but it wouldn't pop. As the evening went on, it got worse and worse. I took a couple of pain pills we had around and they didn't do anything. I tried to sleep, but I wasn't very successful. And my ear started leaking.

Around 5:30 Wednesday morning, Alice got up, which of course, means that I got up, too. I put her on the blanket on the bathroom floor and sat down next to her and bawled until she started looking a little freaked out. Then I tried to keep it to a sniffle. I had never had such intense pressure in my head in my whole life.

A little after 7:00, I put the kids in the car and headed to the urgent care. My hair wasn't combed, Alice was in her pjs, and Jack was a little confused. The PA looked at my ear and told me I had the worst middle ear infection she had ever seen. They gave me two shots (one was for pain, I didn't know or care what the other one was for) and some prescriptions to fill and sent me home.

Aside from my appearance, I am sure I made a great impression on the town. I am glad I went to a clinic owned by one of Jay's friends, because I would have looked like a big drug seeker, I'm sure. In fact, I flat out said that I didn't care what they gave me as long as they gave me something good for the pain. Then I couldn't remember where they sent my prescription, just that it wasn't to WalMart, so I had to go to the drive-thru and ask if they had my drugs. They were trying to chat with me over the speaker, but I couldn't hear out of my bad ear, and I could hardly concentrate because the pressure in my head was so great. I probably gave some awkward laughs and inappropriate responses. Then we headed home.

When we got home around 9:30, I thought the pain might be lessening a bit. I took a shower and tried to take a nap with Alice. By lunch, though, (which I never did feed to either kid) the pain was back worse than ever and stuff was literally pouring out of my ear. Jay called my parents to come over and they took care of the kids while he tried to rearrange his schedule and come home early. After lots of drugs and sleep, I finally got some relief from the pain around dinnertime. This was about 20 hours of non-stop horrible pressure in my head, which was making me basically not be able to function at all. I'm going to go ahead and say it was worse than childbirth.

Today I've felt wiped out and my ear is still leaking, but overall, I feel about a million times better than yesterday. Hopefully the hole in my eardrum will heal quickly and I will be able to hear normally again soon. And now someday when Alice asks why she has some memory of me sobbing in the early morning, I can refer her back to this.