Sick

I am one of those people who never gets sick. Almost.

Or should I say: I am almost never one of those people, or I am one of those people who almost, or – never, or -

I don’t know what happened on March 12. It felt like a cold. Just a nuisancy thing, a premature summer cold (like the viral bout of what-I-was-sure-was-flu last July). One of those gummy-throated, slightly raw, uneasily sneezy – but you already know what I mean.

I don’t know when it pounced. Maybe the next day. Suddenly a lightning bolt slashed across my chest, my throat became so raw I couldn’t swallow, my eyes were sealed nearly shut, I shivered, I sweated, I ached, I couldn’t breathe, and I came to the conclusion that I had one of those nice little summer colds I had last July.

How do I know? My doctor told me so.

It doesn’t matter what you “have” now. Your doctor listens to your back (never your chest), then, even if it’s pleurisy or pneumonia or bubonic plague, says “It’ll just have to go away on its own.”

This thing has been “going away on its own” for ten days now. I won’t get into the digestive problems. Oh yes I will. I have abdominal cramps, gas, diarrhea and it takes days to digest anything. (I am totting up all these “symptoms” just as I think of them.) Last night, trying to sleep while listening to a rhythmic bubbling, creaking groan in my chest, a sudden freshet of blood shot all over my pillowcase, presumably a nosebleed, the first one I have ever had in my life.

Nice little summer cold.

I have had the aches and the shakes. Bizarre gushing sweats alternate with freezing shivers. And twitches, very strange ones, quite violent, almost like little seizures. I get six or seven of them, one right after the other. Why? I couldn’t eat and couldn’t throw up and suffered one of those migraines that should have its own postal code.

It was the usual thing, where it would seem to get a little bit better. One day I went for a drive, came home, lay down for a moment, and lifted my head 90 minutes later, my face stuck to the pillow with God knows what.

I don’t know what got me onto the cough syrup, because I hate the stuff. Maybe it was the groany deep quivering vibrations in my chest that seemed almost like whales talking. Maybe it was coughing up all that unspeakable “stuff”. I took a shot of it once, I swear, just to put myself under. It didn’t work, because cough syrup has all sorts of stuff in it that causes a frightening rebound effect. You lie there in the dark with jangling alarm-bells going off in your head, sure you will never feel any better. Ever.

Funny sounds began to issue from my body. The first funny sound seemed to be coming from my larynx, which was as swollen as a golf ball and almost wouldn’t let me swallow. When I tried to sleep, I heard a noise like an old rope being sawed back and forth on one of those ships, you know, like on Popeye. Then, to my horror, I heard a little “hoo, hoo!” sound, as if something were alive and swimming around in there. It was the first time my larynx has ever talked back to me.

It’s a choir, of sorts, a chorus of mucus and phlegm and other disgusting fluids no one would want. My sinuses crackle and make a sound like a balloon being squeezed. When I sit up in the morning, a huge windy wheeze gusts up out of my windpipe, sounding like an old pedal organ or air brakes on a bus. It scares the shit out of me.

“You HAVE to go to the doctor,” my husband says. “What did the doctor say?” my friend asks me. She must come from the school who still believes “going to the doctor” actually has a point. I have come to believe that doctors do absolutely dick-all these days except listen to your back and push the little button on the machine that says, “It’ll just have to go away on its own.”

I know that for a long time, doctors prescribed too many antibiotics. These same doctors would have us believe that this was all the fault of the patients, because they refused to leave the office without that little piece of paper.  After moaning and groaning and begging and pleading, they went home gaily waving a prescription, feeling oh-so-much-better-already. And eventually, when these drugs stopped working from overprescribing, GUESS WHOSE FAULT IT WAS?

The doctor’s? Don’t be ridiculous! Doctors are fountainheads of Wisdom and Truth. They would NEVER prescribe anything unless the patient absolutely needed it, or else got them down in a choke-hold on the floor and refused to release them until they had that little piece of paper.

The patients, self-indulgent, weak and soft in the head, DEMANDED these prescriptions. It had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that doctors wanted to process patients in and out of the office at light speed, and the best way to do that – the best way to get rid of them fast – was to hand them that little piece of paper.

NEXT!

As with most things, the situation has swung wildly from one stupid extreme to the other. From handing EVERYONE a prescription for banana-flavored Amoxicillin or whatever it's called just to get them out that revolving door as fast as possible, doctors now Do Not Prescribe Antibiotics. EVER. For anything. Antibiotics no longer work, you see. The reason they no longer work is that YOU asked for them all the time, you self-indulgent little whiner! You spoiled it for everyone, so now we can't prescribe them at all, or we'll Look Bad. Some big doctor, some high-up doctor, some Great Agency in the Sky that tells doctors what to do, has now told doctors Not To Prescribe Antibiotics.

EVER.

Which is why I will clearly die, rather than disgrace myself by crawling in to the doctor's office and asking please, please, PLEASE may I have some of that banana-flavored goo with the capacity to save my life.  It's been a privilege whining to you.

Pregnant in hell: or, hello my baby

She wasn’t exactly sure when the pain started.

It can be that way, with pain. Doctors always ask, “So. When did it start?” You’re expected to say, at 9:47 a.m. on Monday, April 27.

At first it was just a tickling, a nagging as if she were about to sneeze. But the pain wasn’t there, it was deep down in her belly. Like a bad menstrual cramp, but she’d been done with those for years.

I knew. Even then I knew it wasn’t good.

It took an incredible amount of arm-twisting to get her doctor to even listen to her. When she bled all over the floor in the middle of the night, that changed things, but only briefly.

"When did you bleed?”

”In the middle of the night.”

“What do you mean?"

“I woke up and – I don’t remember, I was half-asleep.”

“How could you bleed in the middle of the night and not remember?”

Blood gets some attention, so she was pushed on to the ugly-go-round, the medical machine that whirls a patient around and around until they are sick, then dumps them onto the ground again.

Things like an ultrasound were neat, really, because she never had all this stuff when she was pregnant. Just relax, Mrs. Parker. Cold jelly, sort of like lube, and this “thing” they pressed into her, and it didn’t hurt, not even when they stuck a sort of cold wand inside her, reminding her of being abducted by aliens. She wondered if she were being considered as a hybrid pod, though surely she was too old for that.

Then there was the nausea. When did the nausea start? A flicker, a wisp, and – nearly all the time now. So it had to be digestive. Just digestive, because you could not have more than one thing at the same time, it was medically impossible.

She had to have her gut reamed, well, they called it a colonoscopy and really it wasn’t too bad, though her doctor’s office didn’t call for two months with the referral and she wondered if she would die in the interim. 

“Mrs. Parker, this is just a reminder of your appointment tomorrow with Dr. Samadhi."

“Who’s Dr. Samadhi?”

“He's the gastroenterologist. Didn't your doctor's office call you with the appointment date?”

“No.”

“But they made the appointment with us two months ago. Can you explain this to me?”

“No, but I called them twice to ask what was going on and they said, don’t call us any more, we will let you know.”

“Did they let you know?”

Of course! I heard about the appointment months ago and just ignored it. Happens all the time!

So OK, the doctor says, the colonoscopy was clear, the ultrasound was clear, so - .

The doctor shrugged like the dog in the Grinch cartoon, a puzzled look on her face.

So she did what she wasn’t supposed to do and looked on the internet and found 147 potential causes for abdominal pain. Her doctor had checked off two and sent her home.

But the pain. It escalated, something awful, and she was reminded of Rosemary’s Baby and the demon pain dismissed by Rosemary’s doctor during her macabre pregnancy.

It was then that the pain, incessant now (the doctor told her to take a Tylenol) began to work on her, to work on her mind and her spirit.

She began to be blown off-course by this thing, and started to think there was “something” in there.

It couldn’t be a baby, hah! Couldn’t even be a tumor, since that possibility had been  “ruled out” conclusively by machinery. The doctor said she was sure it wasn’t cancer because she looked at her cervix and it looked normal. Not inside her uterus, which she was sure was “fine” because the ultrasound was “fine”.

She was beginning to hate that word “fine”.

She gave up and cadged Tylenol 3 from her husband, sat for hours in front of her computer with an ancient electric heating pad pressed to her belly (covered with a fuzzy Winnie-the-Pooh blankie to keep it in place).

Undressing one night, she was horrified. The skin on her lower abdomen was burned raw, almost branded. The 30-year-old heating pad was something like an old electric chair, she guessed, thinking of that awful scene in The Green Mile where the man is fried alive. But I'd do it all again to get some relief.

She was supposed to be seeing a gynaecologist, but the doctor’s office didn’t call, and didn’t call, and didn’t call. She felt sick and one night broke down and screamed and cried, certain she had cancer and no one cared or would ever bother to treat it.

She could dangle on forever until she died, probably horribly. Meantime the pain, exactly like a furious, deadly menstrual cramp, just escalated until it took over her every waking minute.

“I really don’t think I should give you any painkillers,” the doctor said. “The potential for abuse is just too great.”

“I’ve never abused painkillers.” This was a lie. She had abused painkillers nearly 25 years ago, then stopped and never again took a single unregulated pill.

“It says so on your chart.”

“I’m in pain all the time now. I can’t – “

“Just take a walk. Push on your – here, like – “ She pushed her fingers into her lower abdomen, and it reminded her of volleyball, the way your fingers were supposed to be.

“I’ve done that.”

“Well, can’t you try something else?”

Trudging out of the doctor’s office, the gynaecologist appointment felt like a sort of myth, not even set up yet, or, more likely, set up already, but they just weren’t going to phone her to tell her WHEN, so that she had some sort of date, something to hold on to. She might even miss it and have to start all over again.

It was then, in the evening, that she felt the flicker.

It was the weirdest thing. She was watching TV and knitting something and relaxing in a Tylenol 3 haze, or trying to, with the by-then-constant heating pad pressed to her lower abdomen. The skin had grown tougher now, almost like a thin layer of scar tissue to protect her against electric burns.

A flicker. Nothing, really, a digestive thing probably, except it was dead-centre and low down in her uterus, where they told her the pain wasn't because they still wanted it to be a gastrointestinal issue, something to be remedied with a Tums.

She ignored it, but it came and went, and after a while it was like a sort of tiny fetal wiggle. She hated to think what it might be: could a tumor squirm and move about? The first time she felt the baby move when she was pregnant was thrilling, but that was more of a – what? At least she knew that it was human.

Maybe she could kill it. By this time she was so unhinged by the pain, the pain that didn’t really exist because the doctor wouldn’t give her anything to help her tolerate it, that she began to come up with ideas, maybe thrusting one of her knitting needles up inside herself in that old-fashioned, tried-and-true method of self-induced abortion.

If she took a very hot bath, would it be cooked? It wiggled and jumped harder as the months went by. Still nothing from the gynecologist, no call, although by now her nerves were as raw as her abdomen, with that butcher-shop feeling, blood leaking out of brown paper.

Then it began to actually kick.

She couldn’t go back to the doctor. The doctor wouldn’t even listen to her heart, let alone look at her swollen abdomen or believe something was “in there”. Something alive.

Of course she couldn’t tell friends, tell family, tell anybody, so if anyone phoned her or met her on the street and asked her how she was doing, she carolled, “Oh, fine,” in that cheerful studied way she had. She’d been doing it for years.

Alone with her illness, her mind shrank back and retreated. She walked robotically through her days. As with any illness, not that this was a real illness, there were good days and bad days. Some days she felt better: not “ALL better”, as people usually interpret the word, but “relatively better”. Unlike Rosemary devouring nearly-raw steak, however, she wanted fish.

They sat in a restaurant one night.

“Hon, you don’t eat sushi.”

“I do now.” She attacked her plate like a scavenger.

He looked at her, amazed. “Didn’t you wear that dress when you were – “

Oh yes, twenty years ago! But wasn’t it back in style again? A sort of smock that tied in back and accommodated her burgeoning belly.

But of course he noticed, and they got in a fight about it, with him shouting at her, don’t you even care about your health?

“No. Because nobody else does either.”

“That’s bullshit. Quit feeling sorry for yourself. How can you accuse us of not caring? I can’t believe how selfish you are.”

He bullied her back to the doctor’s office. Four months had passed and there was no appointment for a gynecologist, she was still waiting. The doctor said, these things take time. They’re backlogged, they’re busy. You’re a low-priority case.

“But what if it’s already been booked and I just don’t know about it? What if you haven’t even bothered to tell me? Look, this happened before and I came damn near to missing the appointment altogether.”

Stony silence from the doctor.

"Please, listen to me, please, somebody has to, nobody gives a fuck about the fact that I am about to die!"

An incredulous look, like she had just called her a cunt. The doctor closed her file and just sat looking at her until she left.

In her file, she had written only three words: out of control.

So, no meds, no nothing. Seven months after her initial visit to the doctor, during which she stole codeine from her husband to make life bearable, and nearly undone from grief and stress, she looked in the mirror nude and saw it kicking, her belly rippling from the force of piston legs and tiny little feet.

BUT HOW CAN THIS BE? What is this thing, or did I somehow absorb my twin and it came back to life?

One day, suicidal, she decided to jump off the Lion’s Gate Bridge and was about to leave to do it when the phone rang.

“This is just to remind you about your appointment tomorrow with Dr. Gage.”

“Dr. Gage?”

“Dr. Gage. The gynaecologist.”

“But I didn’t hear anything about this appointment from my doctor.”

“You should have. They set this up six months ago. They should have told you then."

"I didn't hear anything."

"You should have asked them about it.”

"I tried to, but when I - "

Click.

So she went to this Dr. Gage, a man unfortunately, an older man, much older, a pee-smelling stale old man with a saggy hanging face like Peter O’Toole. His vein-bulging hands doddered and clumsed, and it was these hands that were soon going to touch her body, to pry her private parts open.

“You’re going to need an x-ray,” he said in a European accent. She wondered if he had changed his name.

An x-ray? Nobody took x-rays any more. They were like something out of an old comic book. Low-tech. If high-tech equipment was available, it had to be used, simply because it was there. And if it cost more, it had to be “better”.

But oh, hey, an x-ray, she’d had THOSE before, years ago when she thought she had TB. This office seemed like something from the 1950s, and when he came back with this transparency-thing in his hands he slapped it up on a light-screen to have a look.

Holy Hannah.

That’s what he said.

Holy Hannah.

She couldn’t say anything at all. For inside her, plain as day, plain as the nose on her face, was

It was a frog.

Stunned, the doctor murmured, “Frog. Frog.”

“Jesus, how did that – “

“Mrs. Parker, have you been inserting objects into your vagina?”

“NO!”

"Because the practice is not unknown. Especially among psychiatric patients." 

He practically threw her down on the examining table and felt her belly, an even lower-tech thing to do and nearly unheard-of by now.

“Mein Gott, it's alive," he whispered.

You don’t want to hear a doctor say that, but that’s what he said.

“You mean there’s a live frog inside me?”

“Mrs. Parker, I’m sure this can be explained.”

“HOW?”

“Don’t be hysterical. We can do a D and C.”

“But it’s huge! How are you going to get it out?” The frog was positioned head-up, breech. Would they have to pull it out by the legs?

She had an awful thought: frog legs, aren’t they good to eat? Hello my baby, hello my honey, hello my ragtime gal.

The operation was like something out of Ben Casey, the ether mask, the clanking, the cries of “nurse!”. Now she knew she had gone mad. She just wanted this THING out of her once and for all. But when she came around, the doctor did not have a good look on his face.

"I'm sorry."

"What?"

"You haemorrhaged. We had to stop.”

”STOP?”

“Stop. Frog didn’t want to come out. And you were allergic to the anaesthetic. It would have killed you.”

She looked up into his face, abject.

“Kill me.”

“Nonsense. We’ll take a wait-and-see approach. This can be monitored, managed...”

“Oh, you mean LOTS of people have live frogs stuck in their uterus?”

“No, but its rate of growth seems to have slowed. We’ll learn a lot from this, Mrs. Parker. It’s a medical opportunity. Even something of a miracle.”

She wondered if he hankered to be on one of those awful reality shows on TLC, the ones that celebrated monstrous freaks as “miracles”.  “Maybe I should just donate my body to science. I mean, NOW.”

They sent her home, still huge and wriggling inside. It would be years until the lawsuit, when her husband discovered by accident that they never intended to do the D and C, that they wanted to study her, to see how far it would go.

She could feel something, as if the frog were trying to straighten its legs or even jump. It must be enormous, packed inside her with its legs folded up.

She had a demonish thought: when she was a little girl, or maybe once last year at the lake, she went swimming, and somehow a tadpole - . No. It wasn’t possible.

Though pain assaulted her all day, at night she could blessedly crash into oblivion. Then came a night.

She just thought she had to go to the bathroom. Something warm and wet between the legs: she was horrified she’d had an accident. Then she felt something slimy begin to violently jerk and wriggle.

Staggering to the washroom, she sat down on the toilet gripping the seat on both sides, listening as the blood fell in slimy plops, moaning and howling and praying as she waited for the horrific miracle to begin. 

Blood work

 

They should install a little tap on the inside of my arm. That’s what I’ve heard people say. I never thought it would apply to me until a few years ago when it became apparent that, for health reasons, I was going to need “blood work” done (and just what does THAT mean?) every three months or so.

 

It’s an art to tap the mysterious underground streams that throb inside us, and not everyone can do it. My life is besmirched and besmutched by botched attempts that left deep bruising and yielded almost no blood at all, as if I were a human turnip or had somehow turned to stone.

 

 

I’d be happy to keep all my blood, thank you. Especially now that I am no longer a prison of the Moon Goddess that makes us all run out and buy tampons every month. Science needs but a few cells, likely, but always takes what seems like tanks full of it.

 

I don’t know what it is, but I’ve had some sort of revelation. Or something. For years I had my “blood work” done at a local lab I could walk to. Seemed like a good idea. But over the years the service got worse and worse. At least every other time, and eventually every time, the technician couldn’t find a vein. They slapped, they smacked, tied the rubber thingie tighter (though one dithering lady who seemed on the verge of hysterics insisted on tying it loosely around my rolled-up sleeve “so it won’t hurt your skin”). Then they’d jab. Jab jab. Oops. Pull out, turn around, jab some more. This is what it must have been like for Victorian women on their wedding night.

 

 

Then they’d get “that look”. Anger mixed with panic. Anger at ME, actually – they’d usually say something like, “Do you have this problem all the time?” or “Your veins are so tiny!”, or something that made me feel equally swell.

 

My veins wished they could apologize.

 

The worst was when they had to bring in a second person because the first one just couldn’t do it. Then panic ensued, with technicians running jerkily back and forth like something out of a silent movie. I hit rock-bottom a few months ago when, unable to get blood from either arm, they tried to get it out of the back of my hand. It hurt like hell, took ten minutes of agonizingly slow drips, and yielded about a thimbleful, which is probably all those lab fuckers need anyway.
 

 

I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before – maybe I assumed it was one of those geographical cures that’s never supposed to work – but one day I thought, hmm. I thought, WHY DON’T I TRY ANOTHER LAB? Surely all technicians can’t be this incompetent, this panic-stricken and unsure of themselves, not to mention insulting to their clientele’s veins.

 

So I did it. A little uneasily, I cracked the door of a clinic that looked pretty much like the old one. Surprisingly, the waiting room wasn’t choked up with unhappy-looking people in winter coats: I was able to go in right away. As a last-minute decision, I decided NOT to say anything about my “problem veins” or my miserable lack of success as a dispenser of my own blood.

 

I was cool.

 

Cool in the hands of the technician, an older woman with a no-nonsense manner.  I relaxed like a dog under the care of a good vet. The whole thing was over in 30 seconds, and I never even felt the stab.

 

So easy it was, it was almost pleasurable, which I know is a pretty perverted thing to say in this age of vampires.

 

OK, I said, fluke. HAS to be a fluke, or maybe this particular technician is a blood-drawing genius. But the second time, with a different one, it was just as laid-back and painless and FAST. No waiting for the agonizing drip. . . drip. . . drip. . . of  blood being tapped by a needle stuck in the wrong way, at some bizarre angle arrived at by corkscrew-like drilling.

 

It seems like we have a Land of Incompetent Blood-Tappers and a Land of the Other-Type-Thing. The bloodletting today was just ridiculous. She didn’t even say “make a fist”, and I did not feel the brief stab of entry at all. In fact, by the time she finished, I wondered when she was going to start.

 

 

It’s a mercy, for lately the frequency of the drilling has only intensified as new medical “issues” have come up, some of them scary as hell. I shouldn’t think the worst, of course. But I’m suddenly in that netherworld of clinics and waiting rooms and pee bottles and tiny circular bandaids and seeing specialists who may or may not turn out to be special.

 

I have another test next week involving not peeing for several hours, the sort of procedure pregnant women go through all the time. When I was pregnant, the doctor stuck his ear on my stomach and got more or less the same results. But now science must look inside me. Deep inside me.

 

Any time I’ve had a health crisis, which is not often, I would always feel silly when I got the test results back: no, we couldn’t find anything. Part of me wishes they WOULD find something. I crave the drama. But I also hate to be sick. Even having a cold makes me resentful.
 

 

After a most intimate probe in yet another specialist’s office the other day, I was assigned a colonoscopy in February, quite soon actually, meaning my case is of “moderate” importance. In other words, I’m not quite at death’s door from internal rot, but nor am I doing this just for an afternoon’s entertainment.

 

I’ve heard all sorts of things about this procedure. My husband had one done 30 years ago when preparation involved taking  twelve boxes of laxatives the night before, followed by lying helplessly on your stomach with no sedation whatsoever while they Roto-Rooted your insides. I hear now it’s easier, but the preparation takes five days. Fortunately you’re stoned out of your mind while they do the drilling, which I honestly look forward to.

 

But the thing is. . . some part of me, an insistent part, sometimes whispers in my ear, you might really be sick. They don’t do all this shit to a well person, do they? Or maybe they do, to rule it out.
 

 

How would I feel about that? I have to confess that a part of me leaps at the possibility of death with a sort of dizzy joy, like a dog reuniting with its master after the war. It reminds me of that Buddhist saying, “Throw down your earthly garments and run to me.”

 

It’s subversive even to think these things, let alone write about them. And yet, I do think them, pretty much daily. I look at my life and I have to conclude that it hasn’t exactly turned out.

 

Not like I thought, not as I wanted, no not at all. I look at others who have “made it”, who have succeeded and live in a world of stimulating company and conversation, while I sit there knitting.
 

 

I look at authors who’ve won the Giller, the Booker, the Nobel. Well, why not go right to the top while you’re feeling this bad. While I sit there looking at form letter rejection slips from wormy little backwater presses that won’t even give me the time of day. I look back and see years, and years, and years, hundreds of these humiliations, followed by yet one more masochistic attempt, the faithful dog too idiotic to know when to give up.

 

So why do we live? We’re set in motion, and it’s assumed from then on that we WANT to live. Why? Aren’t we sort of stuck with it?
 

 

I guess I live for the wrong reasons. I live for other people, which is also known as “codependency”. It’s a no-no and I must stop it and only live for myself, a self so tattered and shredded with disappointment that I am sure it won’t hold together as the sole reason for staying around.

 

The other thing that sneaks into my mind is this: you know it’s going to happen. I’ve seen six friends die in the past few years, from illness, accident, suicide. Some were younger than me. I have no idea what happened to them, where they went, what happened to their essence. I guess they just stopped. I guess WE just stop, and then there’s nothing. Ever. Or just a few atoms of memory in the minds of others that, too, will eventually stop.

 

So why scramble so hard to keep all this going? It’s assumed that life is an unalloyed good. It’s assumed that happiness is everyone’s natural state, and if you’re unhappy you have a “disorder” and have to take medication for it. What is "assumed" is generally a crock of shit, which is one of the themes I keep returning to in this blog.
 

 

Personally, I have always walked through life feeling like an accident. Due to the helpful information conveyed by my much-older siblings, I know I wasn’t planned, and am pretty sure my mother wanted an abortion. My father talked her out of it by saying, “You wait and see, he’ll be a genius, smarter than all the others added together.”  I’ve felt like a sharecropper here on earth, in this reality, which is why I try so fervently to transcend it with music, with writing, any way I can.



And yet, the Great God Accomplishment still looks down on me, shakes his hoary head and says with a tender smile, "No."

 

Our lives are supposed to be a priceless gift from God and all that, even if we feel like shit a lot of the time. Pain is the norm for an awful lot of people, and endurance their only choice. Even though I’m not supposed to because it makes me codependent, I DO live for other people. I live because I have this idea – I need to think it’s true – that if I died, a few people would feel it. Not many; perilously few. But those few matter immensely to me, and I don’t want to inflict pain on them. I have done enough of that already.

 

 

Why not blow your brains out?

Public Health Care Option 

Crackling in Ear

November 13, 2011  Posted by Julian

Blogger's note: Since coming down with the Virus from Hell in San Francisco - where I left my heart, my wallet and my health - I've had a residual effect that's driving me crazy. I get a crackle in my left ear - actually, it's more like cannon-fire - whenever I swallow. I realize this is probably due to a bit of infection lingering in the eustachian tube and won't clear up except with antibiotics. But last time I tried to get antibiotics out of my doctor I had to get down on my belly and grovel. She simply does not dispense them any more.

Ever.

It doesn't matter how sick you are. She won't give them to you. From handing them out like candy, a way to quickly dispatch nuisance patients and cycle them out of the office without listening to them, the pendulum has swung violently the other way. Doctors have been "told" (by whom? The Big Brother of Doctorhood?) not to do it any more because, as the snappy little TV jingle puts it, "not all bugs need drugs".

But I know why this happened, and it's ALL OUR FAULT. People came in sick, and because they wanted to feel better (and because doctors had been telling them to do this so they'd feel better), they'd ask for antibiotics. So because of  all that overprescribing, which is our fault, NOT the doctors', over time the drugs lost their potency (though that's probably due to all the antibiotics pumped into fish, chicken and carrots to make them grow faster and bigger and to have a shelf life of approximately 100 years).  So all of a sudden it's NOT cool to prescribe antibiotics, meaning doctors have had to find a whole new way of getting rid of patients fast.

They do this by shaming them for even thinking of asking for antibiotics, no matter how sick they are.

One of the more disgusting features of this bug was an eye infection. Pus was running out of my deeply-bloodshot eyes, which were stuck together when I woke up in the morning and had to be pried apart.

"They look fine to me," she said.

I begged; I pleaded. I could not see. Things swam before my eyes, which felt like they were on fire. Finally, with a purse-mouthed look that seemed to say, "well, OK, if you want to be a total hypochondriac about it", she dispensed a tiny bottle of drops that cleared it all up in two days.

But the ear problem, it goes on, along with a raw patch in my throat that migrates around like a storm system. At the height of this illness, which my doctor describes as a "summer cold", it was lodged in my larynx and I could barely swallow or eat.

Too bad it didn't last long enough for serious weight loss.

Anyway, looking up the billion or so foolproof home remedies on the internet, I found lots of wonderful things such as drinking apple cider vinegar and painting iodine on the inside of your wrist. It seems anyone and everyone can assume the demeanor and expertise of a doctor on the net. When I got reading this one, I had a "huh?" reaction followed by a "Jesus God" one.

This essay, which turns out to be written by some guy named Julian, is posted on a site called Publc Health Care Option. Sounds good, eh? Sounds reputable. So why not just get a Q-tip and start rooting away inside your infected ear? Never mind that any doctor worth his or her salt would say you should NEVER try to clear up an ear infection with a Q-tip or anything else that is smaller than a baseball bat. It pushes wax and debris deeper into the eustachian tube and may even rupture the eardrum.

But hey, this Julian guy. . . I like his confidence, not to mention the fact that he doesn't tell us to pour iodine in our ears or wave a dead cat over our head at midnight. Instead, he gives us the Valsava Maneuver, which apparently is at least three different things, none of which make any sense. 

I honestly don't know what language this was in originally, as obviously it's one of those automated internet "translations" that completely destroys meaning and syntax. Or maybe it's in English after all, which makes it even worse. In any case, it sure is repetitive, as if Julian is trying to pound his medical points home.

WARNING: DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME! But do read it as sheer entertainment, and as a cautionary tale about trying internet home remedies. I'm thinking of making one up myself, a warm horseshit compress maybe, to see how many people respond with, "Hey, this really works!"


(Please note. I have encountered English even more badly-fractured than this in medical doctors who were foreign-trained, not that it makes any difference now that  medical schools require a course in Indifference 101.)

Listening to a consistent crackling sound in the ear might be a trigger for concern. A lot of of us usually disregard modest afflictions like ear challenges in the hope they will just go away, or because they are not debilitating enough to disrupt a everyday regimen. Nonetheless, it can be constantly superior to handle a symptom rather then a affliction, and arrest it in advance of it gives rise to supplemental problems.

 

Crackling in Ear – Leads to Listed beneath are some triggers that could bring about a crackling sound inside your ears. Ear wax This is certainly amongst one of the most common brings about for listening to a crackling sound in your ear, and quite possibly the easiest to solution. Use an ear wash from the neighborhood drugstore to get rid of the excess ear wax and unclog ears.

You could possibly even use a Q-tip to remove any wax buildup within your ear. The ideal time for you to use a Q-tip is immediately after a sizzling bath, if the warmth and steam have had a softening effect within the ear wax. Keep in mind to get very watchful when inserting a Q-tip into your ear, taking care not to push also deep as this could induce severe damage like a ruptured ear drum.

Congestion/Sinusitis You could possibly experience crackling sounds inside your ears if you have inflamed sinuses or chest congestion. These signs often display up together along with the quickest approach to get relief is always to use decongestants. Often, it’s possible you’ll hear a crackling sound in your ears when swallowing, which can be the consequence of fluid create up as part of your ears. Untreated, this may lead to ear infections.

Steam inhalation might also offer some reduction, and is also advisable for folks who may have weak chests or simply a tendency to endure from congestion. To the right way inhale steam, use hot, although not boiling water.

Valsalva Maneuver


Area the bowlful of drinking water on a secure floor, cover your head having a towel and inhale through your nose. In case your nose is blocked, you might come across it less difficult to inhale by your mouth. Once you will get some relief from congestion, you might discover that the crackling in your ears when chewing or swallowing has ceased. Eustachian Tube Dysfunction (ETD) It is a ailment wherever blockages build while in the eustachian tube. The eustachian tube is actually a thin tube which connects the center ear to the throat. For clarity, have a search at a human ear diagram.


Construct up of fluid while in the ear can cause Eustachian Tube Dysfunction, among the indicators of which can be hearing a crackling within the ear with loud noises. ETD could also come about as an extra situation if you have a cold, and the signs or symptoms of crackling sounds in the ear will proceed till the chilly has run its course. It’s possible you’ll acquire a blocked Eustachian tube like a end result of fluid or mucus, which prospects into a assemble up of pressure on a person aspect in the ear. This strain will get released once you stretch your jaw, yawn, chew or swallow.

Valsalva Maneuver

It is an additional cause you may listen to a crackling sound or a popping sound within your ear whenever you conduct these steps. Crackling in Ear – Solutions Some simple approaches to tackle crackling seems within your ear are as follows. Yawning or stretching your jaw: Often this uncomplicated motion can cause a popping sound within your ear and put an close into the crackling sound you hear. Chewing gum/sucking on the lozenge: It really is widespread for the ears to receive blocked or to hear a crackling sound when you are in the substantial velocity elevator or with a flight. Some individuals also knowledge ear soreness when with a plane for the duration of consider off and landing. This can be as a result of stress fluctuations that occur. Chewing on one thing can assist relieve this ache.

Valsalva Maneuver

This really is to assist release any pressure made up in your ear. The Vasalva Maneuver includes pinching your nostrils collectively when your mouth is shut after which attempting to exhale with power. Properly doing this workout will crystal clear your ears and stop any crackling seems. The Valsalva maneuver is very powerful in conditions the place higher altitude results in the sensation of blocked ears. In case you find that the solutions over will not offer considerably relief, it truly is suggested that you stop by an ENT professional, who’ll be greater equipped to diagnose your difficulty. Though ‘crackling in ear’ could be a significant irritation, quite a few usually dismiss it or postpone seeking help. Nevertheless, correct care may offer substantial relief and assist in arresting it easily.

Post-post-script. I don't know what I did wrong, but it appears that I have stepped on an internet minefield. I never in my born days wanted some sort of obnoxious pop-up ad on my blog - I didn't willingly make it happen. Maybe it was that link to the Valsalva Maneuver (which, by the way, was a severe warning not to do it), or the fact that Julian's medical treatise came off a bizarre and totally shitty site featuring people who have about as much medical training as Abbott and Costello. Never mind: I just want this OFF me! I tried going on the net for information about this and got so much gibberish and arcane bafflegab that I became totally depressed. I don't know what any of it means. Makes me feel like an obsolete old horse.

If this is a one-time thing, then fine, I will bite the bullet. But perhaps my blog's immune system has been violated by some virus: ironically, in a post about trying to get rid of viruses.

Hosting these things is spozed-ta earn you all sorts of money, isn't it?, but you can't do that if you don't even know it's there, can you? If you have it forced on you? Someone else is making all the money, obviously.

Now I have TWO viruses to get rid of.