It’s not a dinosaur.
If you’ve seen the Buffy episode “Hush” there’s a great moment when Willow ‘shouts’ “I’ve gone deaf!” I made that joke for a week.
The Saturday of WordCamp Portland, I woke up half-deaf and in a fuckton of pain. Not good. I’d had a 101 fever the Tuesday before, but I was feeling tolerable. Friday we get to Oregon, I’m supposed to meet up with Jen Mylo before the pre-party, and ended up saying I wasn’t going, I felt like ass. Jen knew I was traveling with my wife for a change, but asked if we needed anything and on a scale of 1-to-10, where 10 is ‘I’m taking you to the ER’, how did I feel. I replied about a seven, but I had NyQuill and was going to bed early.
Of course I work up feeling worse in a different way: My ear was blocked. I made a no-hugging rule at WordCamp, washed my hands a lot, and woke up Sunday with a low-grade fever. It went away with some Aleve, and I went on my way Sunday to my in-laws. With a pained ear.
It popped around Monday, half-way, but I was stuck feeling underwater and, worse, everything was off-key. I found out there’s a word for this, though: diplacusis. It’s what happens when tinnitus (you know, the ringing in your ear?) decides to play two pitches at once. I had that for over a week, past when I saw the doctor (who said it was not an infection!!!) and started taking Claritin-D to dry me out, until finally, one Sunday, it stopped. Of course that came with me loosing my balance for a day, and the horrible taste of my un-swollen eustachian tubes finally draining down the back of my throat.
No really. I could taste ear-wax and the impacted gunk. It was nasty.
The next day, balance came back, and by the end of that week, my ears finally popped and I could hear my own voice again.
I apologize to my wife for all my bitching.