Lend me your ears
...written on 10.23.02, @ 10:48 p.m.
Wed October 23, 2002
Monday night I started feeling a little odd. My stomach felt kind of "squishy". Tuesday morning I called my Japanese teacher to tell her I couldn't do class as I was ill. I had a sore throat and fever.
Everyone in our office it seems has been sick. John said he went to the gym and sweated his illness out. Brian was sick a few days ago, as were Hide and Eiko. 'Tis the season, I guess.
Anyway, as I was calling all my cohorts at work to tell them I'd be out sick, my Japanese teacher called again to say she was downstairs with some goodies. She brought me up a bag full of juice, oranges, bananas, vitamins and raisin bread. Boy, just what I needed! It was great. My temperature had hit 38.2 C or around 100F, but as my fever kept going up, my body pains diminished, so I was all for getting to the boiling point.
After copious amounts of sleep, juice, aspirin and wipe downs with a cool cloth, my temperature got back to normal. Brian also was a dear and brought me some spicy dinner from the Nepali restaurant.
I had a 9:45 am appointment today with a publishing rep, as well as a full day of classes, so I pushed myself out of the futon. As the day wore on however, my stamina decreased and my nausea and other bad feelings increased. Eiko told my 4th graders to be nice to me since I wasn't feeling well.
I took a peek at my tonsils and they looked like inflamed golf balls. During class, the pressure in my ears built up to an unignorable pain and I couldn't hear out of my right ear. Just before my last class I told my boss I needed to go to the doctor. He asked me when I wanted to go, but when he saw me clutching my head and shaking and crying with pain, he immediately called Fred to come and take me to the hospital.
It was a quick visit to the Emergency Room where the Doctor on duty said I have tonsillitis and gave me four different kinds of drugs (two for the pain, two for the tonsils) and ordered me to go to the Ear, Nose & Throat specialist in the morning.
I've never had Japanese medicine that worked for me, so I told myself that if the pain pill and powder didn't do their trick in 20 minutes that I would double the dose. Ahhhhhh. They worked almost immediately even! Anyway, I shall be keeping them close by my bedside in case of future need.
WOW, what a pain that was! I've never had an earache like that before and wouldn't wish them on anyone.