Here’s your weekly gross-out. It’s getting better, but still can’t fully bend my knee. There’s a doctor appointment next Monday so maybe I’ll get some anti-inflammatory pills. And hopefully an xray on my right hand, which I really think is broken now because it stills hurts so much.

I am in the grooviest doctor’s office waiting room that I have ever been in. It’s probably a simple Ikea setup, but at least it looks new and has clean lines. Someone needs to straighten the artwork on the walls but I’m going to let that slide.

My appointment is for 1:30 and I’m seen at 1:32. I like this doctor already.

I’ve had a couple of left-ear blockages in the past, nothing major and usually a good syringe-plunging washout does the trick and actually feels really good. I tell my new non-insurance doctor what’s going on, he has a look in both ears and explains that it’s not a typical waxy buildup, but that I had liquid behind my eardrum. That is what is stopping the eardrum from vibrating and clicking on all those other little bones in there which produces sound.

He then proceeds to look up my nose because all those holes in your face are connected inside your skull. He, oddly, then pulls out a tuning fork. He rings it and places it near each ear and of course the sound is different because I can’t basically hear out of my left ear. He rings it again and places the handle end on the top of my forehead. The vibrating moves through my skull and directly into my left ear. It was the oddest thing ever and I kind of wanted him to do it again.

Then he sprays a mist that smelled and tasted like Vick’s Vaporub into each nostril while I’m instructed to take a quick snort. Then he brings out a tiny exploratory camera on the end of a flexible tube and sticks that into my nose. This was a little uncomfortable as I feel this tube exploring around my sinuses. That I wouldn’t want to do again. The tuning fork, yes, but not this.

The prognosis is that I have a blocked eustachian tube. This is the tiny canal that connects the ear to the back of the throat. There’s no real quick fix, like the flushing I mentioned earlier, so the only thing to do is take sinusy-type medicines and prescription nasal sprays (he gave me a free sample though). And when I’m purchasing the OTC meds it is apparently the hardcore kind that you can make tina out of, because I’m scanned and documented at the CVS point of purchase. Plus he tells me that I need to become a gum chewer to keep things moving and lubricated. So now I get to be one of those people, but all under a doctor’s care. Okay, meds, do your thing!