My Ears

The last few weeks I've really been struggling with my ears. They've been very painful and I've had a lot of appointments at the campus health clinic to try to clear up a nasty ear infection. I was on three different ear antibiotics and one oral one, as well as a prescription pain killer. The prescription pain killer was pretty nasty as well- as if I didn't feel sick enough it made me incredibly nauseaous. Despite the repeated appointments and all the meds, I was still pretty sick and was really struggling with the pain, dizziness, and the fever. I'm just tired all the time and feel pretty off. My last appointment at the Ross clinic, which was just supposed to be a follow up, was a bit of a surprise to me. She'd gotten my tests back and I had two different types of bacteria in my ear, which should have been knocked out pretty well by the drugs.

Stubborn ear infections are pretty common here so I thought that she would just tell me to keep on the meds and see her in a few more days. Instead she said that there should be some improvment and she was fairly concerned and wanted me to see an Ear, Nose, and Throat specialist in Roseau.

Oops, did I say an ENT? I mean THE ENT, the only one on the whole island. When we first called, on Tuesday, there wasn't an available appointment until next Friday- which seemed like a really long time to wait! Luckily, there was a cancelation and Ryan and I rented a car on Friday and drove into Roseau for an appointment. Well, Ryan drove, we didn't think it'd be a good idea for me to drive, being as dizzy as I was.

Driving here is a bit of an experience. First, you drive on the opposite side of the road, so Ryan, as the driver, was on the right hand side of the car. Second, these roads are WINDY and very narrow and there are a lot of blind turns. And third... people speed. Like crazy. It's a little frightening, but since we had to be in Roseau at a specific time and transports are notoriuosly unreliable unless you hire one all to yourself (which is just as expensive as renting a car) I knew that we'd risk missing the appointment. The other thing that made us nervous was that when we got the car there was only an eigth of a tank of gas! That's what the previous renter returned it with, so that's what we got.

We drove to Portsmouth to try to buy gas, but both of those stations were out. There is no gas between Portsmouth and Roseau, so we just said a little prayer and set out to Roseau. I was very nervous about running out, since there is no such thing as AAA down here. We might have been able to call the car rental company- but it would have been two hours before they got to us with gas. And there is no shoulder or safe spot to pull off on Dominican roads. The gas light came on as we came close to Roseau and I started praying again because we were at the worst part of the road. A cliff on one side and a ten foot drop to the ocean on the other, on a road that would be a one way anywhere else but is a two way road here. Fortunately there was gas in Roseau and we did make it- what a relief!

Once we found the office, which was a bit tricky since many streets in Roseau have no street signs which made my map a bit useless, we realized why it was hard to get an appointment. Look at his hours- I just had to take a photo of his sign!

The waiting room was crowded! It was a tiny little room with 8 chairs scattered around. Unfortunately there were way more people than chairs, and at first I was panicked about how long we'd have to wait. It was pretty clear pretty quickly that many of the groups were together. Why a mother and father and all three children need to go to an ENT together, I do not know. But we did eventually get seats (which was great because I felt like I was about to fall over) and I was seen pretty quickly- only about an hour after my actual appointment. I've heard horror stories about people waiting three hours for an appointment, so I was pretty happy to be seen so quickly.

The doctor did all these tests, which I think Ryan found sort of interesting to watch. After getting my history and checking out my ears, the doctor started testing my hearing and balance. There was no test score, but I'm still pretty sure that I failed. The first thing he did was whisper numbers next to my ear to see if I could hear. I was supposed to repeat them, and according to Ryan (who was on the other side of the tiny exam room) I got more than half of them wrong. Oops! Then he kept moving a ringing tuning fork around my head to see where I could and couldn't hear it. There were times that I KNEW it was vibrating, but I still couldn't hear it. The final test was that I had to stand and put my arms out in front of me- then close my eyes. Apparently the moment I closed my eyes I started to sway back and forth and the doctor put his arms to catch me- just in case!

Pretty much, my ear infection is all cleared up. Apparently, on that trip to Bense Pool a few weeks ago, I damaged my eustachian tubes, which are the tubes that lead from your ears to your nose and allow for drainage and help you adjust the pressure in your ears. In fact, I crushed them pretty well. It's alright though, it will heal and the doctor gave me some meds to help me get better. One is a nasal spray to help the passage heal from that end, and the other is a steriod, which should help it open back up. Apparently this damage to the eustachian tubes is pretty common in divers. The only problem is that this could take as long as six weeks to heal. I was happy about two things- one, this isn't permanent. Six weeks is a long time and that is a bit frustrating, but this could be so much worse. If this dizziness and inability to balance was permanent I could kiss driving and horseback riding good-bye. But I'm lucky and it will heal. And the second thing I'm happy about- no more ear drops! I've had ear drops for the past two weeks and between three ear drops four times a day, I've been laying on my side for two hours a day while Ryan has to keep interrupting studying to put the medicine in my ear. We're both happy to be done with that!

Things are looking up. It's still frustrating to be dizzy so often, and it's a bit scary at times too. My ears are still pretty painful, but these new meds should help and things will get better. I'm just thanking God that it wasn't permanent damage.

Here are some photos of our drive and our car, which we named 'Bobby' for the day.