As I mentioned before, something happened to my ear while we were traveling. By midday in Istanbul, it was obvious that I would need to seek medical attention when we arrived in Abu Dhabi. Craig contacted one of his employees who lives here full time and got an appointment made for the evening we arrived.
After Craig's first partial day at work, he rushed home to take me to the appointment. In his hurry, or distraction, he made a couple wrong turns. He was running late and I was getting stressed that I would miss the appointment. Our appointment was at 5:50 pm, which I expected was her last appointment of the day.
When we got to the medical building, I got out and ran inside while Craig parked the car. After a bit of milling about, I was directed to the elevator to go the second floor. On my way to the elevator, I passed an open set of stairs and decided to walk up instead. On the "second" floor, I found a series of lab stations and some rooms for lab work, but absolutely no people. I had texted Craig that I was on the second floor and he came up the stairs to find me standing there bewildered.
After a moment, Craig realized that they were labeling the floors as they do in England. We had come in on the ground floor. We had walked up one flight of stairs to the first floor. We needed to go up a second flight of stairs to get to the second floor.
Up another flight of stairs, we found a waiting room with receptionists. Checking in was a challenge for me because I could no longer hear at all out of my right ear. Perhaps in sympathy, my left ear had mostly given up on hearing as well. This struggle had plagued me all day, complicated by the fact that my own voice sounded unreasonably loud in my head. As a result, I spoke softly and, in turn, everyone responded quietly to me...and I couldn't hear a word anyone said to me. Craig helped me check in.
The most interesting part of this check in was the fact that they wanted a mobile number for my record. They would not take ours; it had to be a local number. We eventually gave them the number of the employee who had made the appointment for me. As the check in progressed, we learned this also gave the person with that mobile number access to my medical records. We decided that was fine in case we ever needed the records forwarded in the future.
The doctor was very nice, but clear communication was an issue. Between the language issues and my inability to hear, it was a real struggle. At the height of our miscommunication, she wrote in my chart that I've had a hysterectomy (I have not had). But given that the problem was my ear, and this error seemed unlikely to impact the treatment of my ear, we finally gave that up.
I keep a list of my drug allergies on my phone, in the Health app. A list of my medications is there as well. This proved handy as I could just show it to her and feel fairly confident that we had the same information. Fairly confident because there is one medication on my list of allergies that perplexes nearly every doctor I've seen as an adult - ilosone.
Like all my medicine allergies, this is an antibiotic. Most likely it is one that I took as a child for an ear infection. It's been on my allergy list as long as I can remember, but I was so young that I don't even remember the type of reaction I had. When I saw an allergist about my many antibiotic allergies (I had one doctor who did not believe I could be allergic to so many antibiotics), he was the only person to recognize the medication. He merely told me that many children had a harmless rash in reaction to this medication, but I probably shouldn't take it when there are alternatives. He told me to leave it on my list, but he doubted I would encounter it again. It's only today, as I look this up, that I finally understand the reason. I found an article from 1979 describing the FDA's attempt to get the drug maker to voluntarily agree to stop selling Ilosone. The drug maker refused. I can only guess that the drug was pulled off the market shortly after I took it, voluntarily or not. I suppose I keep it on my list, just in case.
Moving to the physical exam, the doctor was unable to look into my ear because the ear canal had swelled shut. This also probably explains why I was unable to hear. She created a cotton and gauze plug and basically wedged my ear canal open so that we could put drops in it. With a prescription for ear drops, a nose spray, and a decongestant, we left.
Two days later, I went back for a follow up. This time, my appointment was the last appointment of the day, set at 7:30 pm. Once again, Craig left work early to take me to the appointment.
The doctor removed the cotton and gauze plug from my ear, which was an enormous relief. She used suction to clean out my ear canal, which was a very strange feeling. I was somewhat disturbed by the clot of blood and pus that came out of my ear, as well, but she seemed unsurprised (to be fair, she had looked into my ear before suctioning it out, so she had a much better idea of what to expect). Now, she was able to see into my ear but she was not happy with the progress. She told us to continue using the drops and other medications, and she added an antibiotic (after much consultation with my list of allergies) and a pain killer.
A week later, my ears only ache a little at night. Like anything related to a cold or congestion, it's worst in the evening. But this is such a huge improvement over where it was when we got here! My hearing hasn't entirely returned, but it is functioning now. I don't know what happened (due to that language barrier), but it is better so I'm just going to be thankful for that.
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