An update - and my absence in recent weeks
Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2015-09-23 02:06:44 - Graham EllisA brief note after a pause ... triggered by a phone call yesterday evening - "are you all right' Graham". Yes - I'm fine ... or fineisn, now.
An apology to those who've missed this blog. The blog has melded into a content flow for the "Well House" sites, with the archive being more read than the original, as social media such as Facebook become fare more the two-way interaction of people with a blog reducing to a conversation where there' always a single lead. So over the past month I have been ... occasionally .. on Facebook at [here]. And that offers an explanation which I'll paste here for posterity:
About a month ago I felt my right ear a bit muzzy early evening, and my balance not being quite right and getting worse. Following morning I woke with no sense of balance, no hearing in my right ear, and a severe sense of seasickness together with the full physical effects if I even moved my head. Initial diagnosis - Labarythitis - and seasickness tablets which have helped, and I have some balance improvement. However - no hearing back / stone deaf on the right still, thus my visit to the doctor this morning.
"Probably never get your hearing back - life changing" says the doctor says. He's throwing drugs at it, emergency referal to EN&T, but that's in hope rather than expectation. Posting this partly to explain my absence, partly to inform you what's happening, partly to alert you to possible side effects of the drugs.
Good news is that I've learned to cope with it a very great deal. Good news is that it's unlikely to spread to my working ear. Good news is that I've proven I can still give courses - I've done a couple over the last 10 days. Good news is that I know my limits so I'm exceedingly careful around things like traffic (road and rail) so I don't get squished by accident. And, heck it could be much worse.
At the start it was awful. Now I'm much less effected and learning to live with it. Starting to train again and starting to catch up. And the end of my course of tablets (last ones taken a few hours ago) should mean an end of those side effects. So back to 90% of what I was by the weekend. And that's a 90% that can work well - loss of direction perception for sounds, loss of some balance, and extra tiredness as eyes and other senses take over from the inner ear can all be accepted and handled.