My Achilles Ear

I have another ear infection.  No, that’s not right.  I may have an alleged ear infection. See, you can’t really tell and they could prescribe anti-biotics, but I hate anti-biotics and think we over use them.  If I have an obvious infection that I can’t seem to shake, I’ll consider them, but other than that, I don’t want them.  Even when they prescribe something they can’t be sure if it’s the anti-biotic that got rid of it, or if whatever it is just left when it ran its course.  Unfortunately, I get these a lot.  I’m a 44 year old woman who is prone to agonizing, swollen, fluid filled, ear… situations. And I have to tell you, it has made me a real advocate for babies with earaches born to parents who don’t get them. It’s excruciating.

Last night I felt it coming on.  My ear started to sound squishy and I could feel a certain warmth deep down in the ear canal.  Uhoh.  I went to bed about 12:40 and fell asleep easily although I remember my last thought being something about how it sounded like the ocean in my ear.  At 5:40 this morning, the pain and the pressure woke me up. I’m so familiar with waking up like that - I hate it.   I’m useless today. There’s so much fluid in my head and everything is loud, but I’m having trouble differentiating between the noises. If I lower the television, I can’t hear it at all, but it’s like some sort of audio depth perception problem.  I can’t read because I’m in too much pain to concentrate on a book, and I’m not really sick, so I don’t need to sleep.  I’m just miserable and bored and cranky and hurting.

I put some homeopathic ear drops in the ear.  It’s a glycerin drop and it feels like a thick oily post nasal drip, except it’s coming from my ear, not my nose.  I’ve had warm compresses on it on and off all day.  It still really hurts.  Another lovely side effect is that my equilibrium is a bubble off plumb.  So yeah, I’m seriously useless today.  Jim’s supposed to be off at 6 tonight, and he’ll bring home dinner. but I’m not counting on his actual arrival at any set time.  In the meantime I’ve enlisted my children’s help.  The upside is that it’s really nice that these kids actually like taking care of me. It’s funny.

Any other ideas out there for homeopathic ear ache remdies?  You know, that won’t make me lose my hearing?  Thanks.