Doctor Update

I just got home from visiting my new ENT and am not sure what to think.  He was nice enough and seemed pretty thorough, but I’m still questioning a lot.

Not only did he do a physical examination of everything from my shoulders up, but I also had an ear pressure check and a hearing test.  Interestingly, I seem to have some nerve hearing loss in my right ear.

So his diagnosis is that I actually possibly have two conditions going on right now.  The first is the one I mentioned, patulous eustachian tube.  He even brought it up without me mentioning it (thank God).

The second is that he thinks I may also have Meniere’s Disease.  Yippee.  For the Meniere’s Disease, I need to try to reduce my sodium levels in the hopes that that might help.  For the eustachian tube problem, he recommended all of the things that I’ve read online about.  And the information I’ve seen has said that they all either don’t help or make things worse and cause other problems.

The first is a nasal allergy spray – even the thought of using it makes me cringe (Note:  I just tried it and survived).  The second is that he suggested I consider having him slit a hole in my eardrum on my next office visit in six weeks.  Um, can we say hell NO!  That is not a risk that I’m willing and/or ready to make at this point.  He also mentioned tubes, which as I said, everything I’ve read says that it seems to cause more problems than it solves.

So for now, it’s just going to have to be good enough that I have some diagnoses.  I’m going to start watching my sodium even more (I already do to a certain extent) and will give the nasal spray a shot.

Wish me luck….weigh-in is in a few hours!

Now I”m going back to bed for a while!