Not quite virtual reality.....
Dec. 22nd, 2018 02:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osodecanelaSo this isn’t “Ready Player One”, but for sensory input, it was an ear eye opener.
I’ve had an outer ear infection for months. Annoying, but not painful, and I had convinced myself it was probably fungal, after it hadn’t responded to the standard antibiotic drop. Fungal otitis externa is less common than bacterial, but given the lack of response and the typical discomfort that’s generally seen with otitis externa, I assumed it was a resistant fungus, which isn’t all that rare. Most annoying was the intermittent discharge that would collect and temporarily plug up my hearing. Yesterday morning I decided I’d had enough and I called an ENT colleague I used to refer to while I was still in practice to see when he could see me. Two and a half hours later I was in his waiting room.
Why hadn’t I done this sooner? Stupidity. Inconvenience. Stubborness. With everything else to take care of, I’d just back burnered it. Santa Rosa is 90 minutes away. Not exactly around the corner. Why yesterday though? Well, I was going to see the orthopedist late yesterday afternoon for my shoulder; after 6 weeks of topical anti inflammatories, the bilateral biceps tendinitis is much better on the right side, but not the left. It was time for the next step - getting the damned thing injected.
After filling out paperwork I was ushered into a treatment room and set onto a treatment chair, right in front of a flat screen TV. Seated 3 feet away from a 40” flat screen left me contemplating Netflix. Ten minutes later, I was watching everything my colleague was seeing & thereafter doing to my ear. Immediately in front of me was a view of my ear canal, blazened across the monitor, the canal now the size of a generous soup terrine, and the ear drum a dinner plate.
I watched as he suctioned away the discharge after culturing it, and then with a tiny alligator clamp, peeling away the adherent collection of wax & old dried discharge. Not painful in the least, but i was able to feel every last movement he made inside my ear. Skillfully and gently, he peeled away was looked like giant sheets of biological wall paper & I could feel all of it! Again not painful but odd nonetheless, because I could see it happening in real time on the big screen in front of me. With each semi adherent layer removed I could sense my hearing improve. Seeing an alligator clamp so deftly removing all that debris, a clamp l new to be less than 1/4” across, on screen appeared larger than the business end of a snapping turtle.
The experience was a bit surreal.
I’ve had an outer ear infection for months. Annoying, but not painful, and I had convinced myself it was probably fungal, after it hadn’t responded to the standard antibiotic drop. Fungal otitis externa is less common than bacterial, but given the lack of response and the typical discomfort that’s generally seen with otitis externa, I assumed it was a resistant fungus, which isn’t all that rare. Most annoying was the intermittent discharge that would collect and temporarily plug up my hearing. Yesterday morning I decided I’d had enough and I called an ENT colleague I used to refer to while I was still in practice to see when he could see me. Two and a half hours later I was in his waiting room.
Why hadn’t I done this sooner? Stupidity. Inconvenience. Stubborness. With everything else to take care of, I’d just back burnered it. Santa Rosa is 90 minutes away. Not exactly around the corner. Why yesterday though? Well, I was going to see the orthopedist late yesterday afternoon for my shoulder; after 6 weeks of topical anti inflammatories, the bilateral biceps tendinitis is much better on the right side, but not the left. It was time for the next step - getting the damned thing injected.
After filling out paperwork I was ushered into a treatment room and set onto a treatment chair, right in front of a flat screen TV. Seated 3 feet away from a 40” flat screen left me contemplating Netflix. Ten minutes later, I was watching everything my colleague was seeing & thereafter doing to my ear. Immediately in front of me was a view of my ear canal, blazened across the monitor, the canal now the size of a generous soup terrine, and the ear drum a dinner plate.
I watched as he suctioned away the discharge after culturing it, and then with a tiny alligator clamp, peeling away the adherent collection of wax & old dried discharge. Not painful in the least, but i was able to feel every last movement he made inside my ear. Skillfully and gently, he peeled away was looked like giant sheets of biological wall paper & I could feel all of it! Again not painful but odd nonetheless, because I could see it happening in real time on the big screen in front of me. With each semi adherent layer removed I could sense my hearing improve. Seeing an alligator clamp so deftly removing all that debris, a clamp l new to be less than 1/4” across, on screen appeared larger than the business end of a snapping turtle.
The experience was a bit surreal.
