Wellington · Living

So, as some of you know, I picked up an ear infection on my Virginia Beach trip. I think it started out as simple case of swimmer's ear, but then one night the pressure built up and there was an eruption in my ear canal. Don't worry, I don't think my eardrum was hurt. But ever since then, there's been weeping of gross fluids from my left ear, and itchiness like I can barely stand.

It was mostly just annoying at first. I only got four days of swimming in. After I got the infection, I couldn't swim freely, as I didn't wish to put my head underwater for fear of making it worse. But that wasn't so bad. Having nieces who wanted to learn to swim without getting too deep, wading in up to my shoulders worked OK. I didn't get as much physical activity as I'd hoped would offset the excessive vacation eating, but not a big deal. And it was fun teaching the girls to swim; they were at that magic point where in a single hour, they got from fear to near total confidence in the water.

But now, almost a week and a half later, it's a bit more than just annoying. I've cleaned out the mess every day, twice a day, with rubbing alcohol and careful, careful Q-tip use, but it's still lingering. My pillows are disgusting. My primary care physician's office is entirely unhelpful: no appointments available for weeks. I don't feel like going into the emergency room; I'd rather tough it out than wait six hours for care, and distract my local doctors from more important emergency cases. I wish I could afford a POS plan, instead of HMO, so I could just go to the Doc-in-a-Box and get it taken care of. But no, I have to call in the referral, and the referral service from my PCP's office had nothing.

I didn't think I'd miss the University's UHS plan, but man I'm missing the ability to walk over to the UHS Student Clinic and just get service anytime during the workday. Tufts is edging towards getting dropped, if I can find a way of keeping my allergist and endocrinologist.

In the meantime, I'm keeping my ear clean, taking vitamins and eating healthy. I think I'll make it without antibiotics without damage, which is probably good as I won't help to create the resistant strain of ear badness. And I can still hear through my left ear, if severely volume-reduced by the sound barely getting through the gunk. I'll have my PCP take a look when I finally get to meet her in August. Assuming her office doesn't just arbitrarily move the appointment again. But seriously, we're nearly one year and counting without me having met the woman for our initial appointment, and that's just sad.