Ears and fears

On Monday I woke up feeling "not quite right".  I had actually started to go to work, because I figured I would be bored if I stayed at home all day.  I got in my car to leave, had a wave of nausea, came back inside to vomit, called out of work, and went back to bed.  I suppose it's a good thing this happened, because when I woke up at 4pm I had a full-on fever.  This kept me in bed pretty much until late Wednesday and was a miserable experience every step of the way.

On Wednesday, I actually tried to go into work, but left an hour after I got there because I still wasn't up to snuff.  I decided to call a doctor - not so much for the fever, but more because I felt like I had an earwax buildup in my left ear and it had been irritating me all week.  I couldn't get my PCP due to the short notice, but was able to see a different doctor in the clinic that afternoon.  The doctor checked, and removed what earwax there was, but he told me that there was a fluid buildup in my inner left ear that would need to drain on its own.  Either the fever/sickness caused the blockage, or the blockage caused the fever (I didn't really have any other symptoms typical of the flu when I was sick).  He recommended me Afrin (nasal spray) to keep my passages open, and to yawn/pop my ears as much as possible.

I tried my best to keep this out of my mind, but by Friday I was pretty much freaking out.  The feeling sucks - it's like there's something in my head, not quite interfering with my hearing but still noticeably muffling things.  I called my PCP's office on Friday morning for a referral to an ENT, and called back again in the afternoon, but never heard back from their referral specialist.  I left work early to go to the Mass. Eye and Ear Infirmary, because thoughts like "what if this gets much worse?  what if my ear feels blocked for months?  what if my eardrum bursts?" were increasing in frequency and messing up my ability to focus on my work.  They checked me out completely - the guy I had on Wednesday left me feeling like he wasn't the best, but the woman I got on Friday was quite comprehensive.  She vacuumed out what she could get (not much, as the fluid blockage is apparently on my inner ear and unreachable that way), put a tube up my nose and looked to make sure nothing was wrong, and told me that it was really slowly clearing with no sign of infection and that I should be fine.

To give some perspective - I have a history of turning negative experiences into phobias, and I feel like that's what freaked me out so badly on Friday.  I get flack amongst my friends at work for hating balloons - this is because 10 years ago I worked in a job where they filled a neighboring coworker's cubicle with balloons for her birthday, and they would POP randomly and scare the hell out of me for three days (until I complained).  Almost everyone that knows me knows I hate ketchup - this is because I once got an employee at Subway who didn't know the difference between marinara sauce and ketchup, leading me to bite into the grossest chicken parmesan sandwich I've ever had.  And eight or so years ago I got water in my ear at a water park, made it worse trying to remove it with a Q-tip, and spent three days deaf in one ear because the first doctor I went to completely botched things and cut something on my inner ear trying to remove the blockage.  I can't stress how much that hurt.  To this day, I really hate the feeling of things in my ear - to be honest, even if I didn't have the whole trans- thing to deal with, the fear of water getting in my ear usually keeps me out of pools and oceans.

So now it's been a week, and I'm trying to figure out how to get things back on track.  The blockage still exists, but just like when I was transitioning I feel like fearing the worst will bring me nothing but stress, so all I can do is learn to deal with it until it goes away.  I maintain - as I always try to - that positivity can take me a really long way.  Meanwhile - I haven't shopped for more than a week now (for some reason, I only shop when I'm in a good mood) and still would like to add a lot to my collection of wintery clothes.  It just dawned on me writing this paragraph that perhaps piercing my ears - something I've been putting off for awhile now - might possibly take my mind off of all of the other ear stuff.  I want to go to MAC/Sephora and have them help me figure out makeup a bit better, and a mani/pedi is long overdue as I always love the way my fingers/toes look and feel when I'm done.  Also, I want to switch my PCP - my doctor is really nice and seems good, but his office is a disaster and I've heard that there is a practicing one in Somerville who is a post-operative MtF who I assume would have a good handle on some of the health issues I'll be facing.

Basically, long story short: my life hasn't been the best in the last week, but I think the brunt of my problems are gone/going away and I expect things to turn around for the better again.