Sunday, March 28, 2010

Hello, Norco, My Old Friend...

Yesterday evening, pressure started building up in my ear. At first it was just annoying - sounds were muffled, it kinda hurt. By the time we were done kicking off Becky's birthday season with our family dinner at Rudy's, my ear hurt pretty bad. I could hear my heartbeat like the drums of war.

Back at home, I writhed on the couch, pouring warm olive oil into the offending ear. We went on an emergency 10 pm run to Wheatsville to get some herbs. My dad made me eat a tortilla doused in Rooster sauce, a spicy Asian hot sauce. I will never eat Rooster sauce again.

By midnight, the pain was sharp. Nothing had worked. Well, the Rooster sauce had momentarily taken my mind off of the ear pain, but only because my mouth was on fire, and hurt worse than my ear. I knew I wasn't going to get any sleep. Unless...

I dug that miraculous orange bottle out of the back of the medicine cabinet. The super-strong painkilling narcotics the hospital had given me after I had Declan were going to come to the rescue. Sure enough, I took one and was out like a light.

I woke up around 4 am, when it wore off, to a searing pain on the side of my head. I stumbled to the kitchen, popped in another Norco, grabbed some crackers (those drugs are brutal on an empty stomach) and went back to bed.

At some wee hour of the morning, I woke to a loud POP. My ear started leaking all over my pillow. My eardrum had burst. If I hadn't already been pain-free, I'm sure that would have been a great release of the pressure. But the drugs were still in effect, so it was less miraculous, more just icky. I grabbed a cloth diaper that I keep next to the bed for spit-up, stuffed it under my head, and went back to sleep.

Now I'm deaf in one ear, but no longer reliant on narcotics.

And that is my tale of why I am forever grateful to the nurse that convinced me that I shouldn't forgo the Norco prescription just because my hoo-ha didn't hurt that badly.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

OH MY GOSH!!! Natalie Rose... that is a great one! Thank goodness for drugs, and kinda for burst eardrums.