#the steroid nasal spray the dr gave me has been helping a lot but also my blood vessels jist explode every now and again now

[six-of-ravens]

it has been 0 days since our last life-threatening nosebleed

[softheartedpoet]

ok so i woke up in the middle of the night last night with sudden, intense, and sharp pain in my inner left ear and passed out shortly after and then when i woke up again this morning the pain was at an 8/10 and now i'm at a local urgent care covered under my insurance (i had to call a few places and check after getting a list from my insurance)

and i'm gonna liveblog this experience to curb my anxiety, which is now at about 100000

edit: i’m gonna put all the reblogs into this first post below the cut to reduce the clutter on my blog

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i’ve called my mother about five (5) times today already, which is probably more than i usually call her in a week

has anyone else had a similar experience with sudden onset and sharp inner ear pain?

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my vitals were good (bp lower end of normal, temp also lower end of normal) except for my heart rate, which was above 100 bpm just sitting in the patient chair because of anxiety… i hate dr. waiting rooms. no fever, no bodily aches, so infection isn’t likely

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final update:

ok so apparently my u-tube (eustachian tube) is experiencing dysfunction with an accompanying earache, causing clogging and failure to drain into my sinuses. the clogging may also contribute to barotitis media, inflammation the middle ear, that may lead to permanent damage of my hearing or complete hearing loss (barotrauma), which sounds terrifying but is not likely in my case since i went in to see a physician right away.

the DO i saw gave me a large list of possible remedies, a few of which he strongly recommends (rest, lots of fluids, a cool mist vaporizer in the room while sleeping, and an expectorant cough medication every few hours) and a few marked as optional if the first couple don’t work (saline and nasal steroid spray and an OTC nasal decongestant spray or oral decongestant, also more than once a day).

what still intrigues me is the curiously sudden and intense onset while i was sleeping. if clogging is the cause, i would expect a gradual increase of discomfort and pain over time; it’s possible that it happened while i was sleeping and i wasn’t woken up from the pain until it passed a threshold. the cause of the dysfunction is unknown; it could be resulting from allergies, viral infection, dehydration, or any number of things. i have no allergies, am usually well-hydrated, and maintain excellent hygiene, so i suspect the cause might be a viral infection or something else entirely. i can also sense when i start to feel dehydrated, and that doesn’t happen very often. i have known that using q-tips to clean the inside of the ear canal can cause trauma to the middle ear and result in pain, but i have never used q-tips to clean my ear canal. instead, i carefully wash my outer ear in the shower (making sure not to get any hair, facial products, or water inside the ear canal) and dry it off completely afterwards. i guess it just goes to show that even when you think you’re doing everything right, you might still wake up at 5 AM writhing in pain.

i will be carefully monitoring my body temp and mucus discharge (from my nose) over the next couple of days at least, as a fever and/or change in mucus color could indicate a bacterial infection, which is highly likely given the clogging. i’ve also been advised to follow-up with a PCP within a week if the treatments don’t seem to be working and even sooner if the pain and discomfort gets worse. the nurse who handed me the papers with my discharge instructions told me that i may also want to see an ENT (ears, nose, and throat) specialist at least once.

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ok i lied one more final update: so the pain and discomfort have decreased by about 90% and hydrating and resting seems to have helped the most. i’ll likely follow-up with an ENT sometime soon just to check things out but the worst seems to be over also thank you !! to the people who replied:

@heathers-recovery i’m okay now, thank you heather! @midcrisislifeme turned out not to be an infection, but i have heard that they are a lot worse in adults. the u-tube doesn’t fully develop and settle into its final position until after childhood, that might have something to do with it? @cephalon thank you kevin!! @anshin1 kinda serious but hopefully it won’t happen again @teacup13 ♡

and also thank you to the people who messaged and texted me!! @pomegranatepithos @aliveinsideink @tremblingwarsong @mermaeids @dhritspoetry

i love you all, thank you for your concern and for reading, you all and live-blogging helped tremendously with my anxiety ♡