Dept. of O.D.T.A.A.

That would be the Department of One Damn Thing After Another.

So, I went back to the ear doctor for a re-testing of my hearing loss. Although the recalcitrant infection is finally gone, there was no appreciable improvement – the hearing loss is still in both ears, though somewhat assymetrical. My doctor – who is very nice but younger than me (I’m getting to that age now, where cops and doctors are younger than me and call me, “ma’am,” egad!) bit his lip and considered for a second and then said he wanted an MRI of my brain and the brain stem.

Yeah right, like I’m getting back in that tube! I had one of those two years ago!

“Oh, you had one two years ago, did you? Do you have the film?”

In fact, I did. So, today I went back to his office to have a test called an ABR (auditory brainstem response). Not awful, just clicking in the ears for about 15 minutes. We’re looking for neurological damage up to and possibly including something called an Acoustic Neuroma. Happily, usually not malignant, but it does have other causes for concern.

God bless the internet, sez I, although I doubt thetechnician who performed the ABR on me today feels the same, as she had to answer all the questions I had formed from a few hours of intense googling of the subject.

Anyway – the quest goes on, we’ll get to the bottom of the hearing loss and take it from there.

And just think, if I hadn’t gone swimming and gotten myself a terrible ear infection, we’d never know about all this. I guess this is why we’re supposed to give thanks in all circumstances!

In the meantime, I lost a filling and found a lump in my breast. So, as I say, it’s just one damn thing after another. I’m not worried about the lump – I have a strong suspicion it’s just a cyst – and I’ve already made a mammogram appointment, so I’m not even going to worry about it until I’m told to.

The freaking filling! That makes me unhappy. Almost nothing in life upsets me more than dentist drills and promises of root canals. (When I was 14 I had a root canal from a dentist who would not give me novocaine and kept insisting that what he was doing didn’t hurt. Since then I’ve harbored a rather dislike of dentists and dentistry. I go…but I don’t like it.)

It is times like this, though, that I am very thankful and grateful for medical insurance and dental coverage.

I am having a difficult time, though, being thankful for the filling loss.

I have a physical scheduled for August. I have decided that for my birthday I am going to give myself the present of having undergone my pap smear, mammogram, colonoscopy, dental work and whatever else presents itself, so that in October I can turn 47 with a sense of either relief that all is well, or that all is being looked after and will soon be well. Or that what can’t be made well can be lived with…or through! :-)