Pain in the ear

I rarely get ill. It's just one of those things. My step-mother is a nurse and can verify that, at one point, I quite literally had the 48-hour-flu for less than 24 hours.

When I do get sick, though, it's usually a doozy. This time is no exception.

In July, just after getting back from Maui, I came down with an ear infection. Nothing major, the doctor gave me some topical antibiotics (neomycin ear drops) to put in 4 times a day for a few days and that was that. After about 5 days, it cleared up and went away.

In mid-August, I started feeling the same kind of thing happen, so I went to the doctor again and told him. He looked slightly askance, gave me the same drops plus an oral antibiotic (amoxicillin) for 10 days. After 10 days, it was mostly gone and seemed to come and go. I went to Big Bear for Labor Day, and most of the time it was fine.

Well, I get back from Big Bear, and my ear's been "clogged" the entire time since. I gave it a few days in case it was just the altitude change, then scheduled an appointment for yesterday. So, now I have two brand new antibiotics (ofloxacin drops and ciprofloxacin orally) and an antifungal drop (clotrimazole), because he saw weird stuff on my ear drum as well as discharge.

Yay me.

I've also got a referral for an ENT and a culture of whatever-is-in-my-ear going, so hopefully next week we'll find out more fun stuff. This, though, can soon be counted as the most visits I've ever had to do for a single issue. Even with my hernia operation, I had 2 clinical visits (one PCP, one specialist), the surgery, and then 2 follow-ups with the surgeon. I'm already at 3 for this one; one more followup with my PCP on the culture and the ENT referral makes 5, and I'm likely going to need more than one visit with the ENT.

Good thing for having great medical insurance, though. I know a lot of people outside of California hate Kaiser, but SoCal Kaiser Permanente is awesome.

The good news, though, is that with all these antibiotics flowing through me, the only things I should have to worry about for the next few weeks are viruses.