I hate hospitals.
Like absolutely HATE them.
But, I love Grey's Anatomy, isn't that ironic?!
Anyway, I spent an entire day in a Brooklyn hospital, all by myself, for a damn ear infection. I woke up and could not hear absolutely anything going on around me. My first reaction was my ears are clogged from me being sick two days ago. As I rolled around the bed with a massive headache, I realized that I heard fluid moving around inside my ears, so I figured a Q-tip would solve my problems, I was wrong. Next solution was to put a hot washcloth over my ear to calm the pain, which helped a lot, so I kept repeating that for about 20 minutes. Once I got annoyed of getting out of bed to get hot water, I figured I should walk to the pharmacy two blocks away to buy ear drops and Gatorade.
Shit got real as I walked down one of the noisiest streets in Manhattan to the closest Duane Reade. I couldn't even hear the cars driving by on the street, so I knew something was wrong. Ear drops did not help, and Web-MD did not help AT ALL, so I went to the hospital thinking I could see a nurse or doctor to check out my ears. You can only imagine how nervous I was as I walked up to the hospital, and having the receptionist directing me to go to the E.R. made everything worse. I walked down the hall as if I got sent to the principal's office. I packed an overnight bag, snacks, and everything, because... you never know. After checking in, showing my health insurance card and state ID, I waited for a good hour... in pain. I even called my aunt to inform her that she was listed as my emergency contact, and that if ANYTHING happened, to come pick me up. They finally called my name and it took the doctor literally two minutes to ask three questions and flash a light in my ear to tell me that both of my eardrums had been punctured from fluid build up, most likely from me being sick earlier that week. Shoutout to my insurance and doctor because my prescription was ready to be picked up at the nearest pharmacy before I even put my coat on to walk out the hospital.
The pills are a whole other story. I had to take an ibuprofen pill every 6 hours, an oral amoxicillin tablet twice a day, and put five ear drops in each ear twice a day. If you know me, my life has no balance, and I never follow a set schedule. One pill, I had to have with food, and the other I had to drink plenty of water... I couldn't keep up! The only motivation for me remembering to take my medicine was trying to heal both ears before my flight to California 10 days later. I prayed for healing hands so many times.
The next ten days weren't as bad as you would think. I barely spoke to my coworkers at work, because what's the point of engaging in a conversation if you can only hear half of a sentence?! My roommates would jokingly yell to communicate with me, which actually was the best way for me to hear them. About 60% through my healing process, I began talking and engaging in more conversations, only to find out that when I was talking to people, they could barely hear me. I was talking out loud and hearing myself in my head, but my voice level was so low to other people that they would lean in and ask me to repeat what I just said. I felt so worthless, because this was something that I was not used to, or expected to ever happen. I couldn't listen to music with headphones in, so I actually paid attention to other people around me on the sidewalks and subways for once. I never tell people this, but my anxiety levels increase when I feel like people are staring at me, so walking around without headphones started to create voices in my head that people were watching me. Let's forget that I mentioned that, I was looking forward to the painless airplane ride that next weekend. Luckily, I was able to enjoy my trip after the longest flight of my life... but you'll hear more about that in next week's blog post!