Thanks to my fibromyalgia and constantly dislocating joints, my pain tolerance is fairly high. Even before the fibro I’d had nurses tell me my tolerance was high. While the fibro has dramatically increased my pain tolerance, it also makes me feel more pain (since my pain receptors are all, essentially, turned on constantly). Well, now that you know that, on with the main purpose of this post.
I have been doing ear drops in my left ear for awhile now (well, yet another round I started awhile ago). Right now, I have two types of drops and I need to do each one twice a day. I’m doing drops four times a day, and I’m supposed to do them for ten days. I wasn’t able to get one of my drops until Monday evening, so I need to do that one until next Thursday morning, but I can stop the other ones on Sunday morning. The one that I need to take until Thursday is called Clotrimazole, and that is the drop involved in this story.
As I said, I’ve been doing the Clotrimazole drops twice a day since Monday evening, which was 5 doses before this morning’s dose. The drop schedule means I do the morning Clotrimazole on my own (because Dan is already at work). The drops are very viscous, so I need to lie on my side for a few minutes to let it coat my entire ear canal. This morning I lay on my side for a minute or two and insert a cotton ball into my ear canal to hold the drops in while I finish getting things ready this morning. I put my nightguard away, and then bent over to put on an ankle brace. Suddenly, I’m in excruciating pain! I’m not even kidding. As I mentioned earlier, I have a high pain tolerance, so excruciating is complete and total agony. I quickly yank out the cotton ball and lay so that my ear might drain. By then, the pain reaches from the base of my ear where it connects to head all the way to my tongue, yes, tongue.
The pain is so bad that I end up curling up into the position that I am now going to call Bawling Bean; I’m lying on my side, in the fetal position, and I’m crying uncontrollably. It takes a LOT of pain for me to do that. I get Dan on the phone, because I know I can’t handle this on my own (mentally, so I just need to hear his voice). Once he hears me and can tell how hard I’m crying, he sounds noticeably more worried about whether or not he needs to come home. While he was on the phone, the pain subsided enough that I could get dressed to do things for the day. However, the pain is not gone. There is still a dull ache on the entire side of my face along my jawline.
(This is not me, just an image from a Google search)
Being able to feel the drops all the way down to my tongue is a very bad sign. It likely means that my holes are open again. I just saw Dr R yesterday, and he said my eardrum looked fine… and I can’t seem to reach Dr K yet today. After the office opens again, I’m going to try to get ahold of them one more time. If I still can’t reach anyone, I’m going to call Dr R and hope that he can at least tell me what to do with the drops and maybe call in a prescription for different ones that won’t hurt. Tomorrow I’m leaving for California (I’m leaving my house around 5:30a), and won’t be back to Colorado until late on the 26th. I don’t know when I’m supposed to get my ear fixed. I was afraid this would happen on the plane or while I was in Cali, but now I’m frantically scrambling to figure things out. Ugh.
I’m still in a lot of pain, but I’ve luckily been able to climb out of Bawling Bean… but I think I’m going to need to take pain medication before I can be very productive. I hate this.
More posts from the Great Ear Saga
The Great Ear Saga (beginning)
Finding Life's Silver Sun 