My cold turned into a flu. The flu turned into a middle ear infection. My middle ear infection turned into a ruptured ear drum (ouch, ouch, ouch!) and an inner ear infection.

So now, I'm deaf in my left ear, except for an annoyingly loud case of tinnitus. I can hear perfectly fine with my right ear, but the ringing in my left ear is so loud that I can barely hear anything from my right. It's like trying to talk to someone while at a noisy concert. Even if they're screaming, you can barely hear them. It has significantly diminished my social life since I can barely carry on a conversation.

My kids also have fluid in their ears, so none of us can talk to each other without gestures, lip reading, and very loud sentences that start with "I said...!" Since we all know a bit of sign language, we've been using that to communicate.

I'm also insanely dizzy. There are lots of definitions for faith. For me, it believing that something is true, even when there is evidence to the contrary, simply because you are certain that it's true. I've discovered that I have immense faith in my eyes because I can't trust my sense of balance. I have to just keep trusting my eyes to tell me that I'm walking in a straight line, not going up or downhill, not falling, and not swaying from side to side. Every movement feels very dreamlike. Unfortunately, I can't drive, and I can barely walk anywhere. I wouldn't even dare to ride a bike. Fortunately, I've learned to tolerate the motion sickness quite well.

Hey, on the bright side, if I ever need to perform surgery while on a ship during a storm, I will have the superior balance skills to do it.

Labels: My Life