A Chronic Sickness

For those of you who didn't know, I have been out of school since April 22. That is exactly seven weeks today, and believe me I would do anything to be well enough to go back.

It all started when I got a severe case of bronchitis. I went to the doctor, only to find out that on top of the bronchitis, I also had an ear infection (which is very unusual for a teenager to get). At that point I didn't even know that I had anything wrong with my ears because there was no symptoms of anything. So my doctor had prescribed me some antibiotics and said that if I wasn't better after taking it for six days, to come back to be re-evaluated.

So six days later I show up again, only worse. I could know feel the excruciating pain of the ear infection, which felt like I was being stabbed in my ears and fully blocked all hearing from my right ear and partially from the left, light sensitivity and a nonstop headache that wouldn't let me fall asleep until I passed out from exhaustion each night around 2 AM. My doctor, surprised that the medication was ineffective, then had me come to her office three days in a row to get shots of a different medication. (at this point I still had a little bronchitis too, but it was going away thankfully)

After those three days of shots only left me with bruises on both of my arms, and no effect on my ears. My doctor the suggested that I go and see an ear, nose, and throat doctor (ENT for short) to see what was wrong with me. I went to the ENT the next day (his office looked as if it had not changed since the 80s) and he only reiterated what I already knew. I had an ear infection in both ears blocking some of the ear drum which is why I could barely hear. He prescribed me steroids in an effort to bring down the swelling around my ear drums. This worked well but not without any consequences. Now instead of not being able to hear while having a horrendous headache and light sensitivity, I now have hypersensitive hearing. Which does not help when you live in the loudest house on Earth.

My neurologist had said to get a MRI and a MRA, to see if the problem was in my brain. The experience of having a huge, extremely noisy machine around your head for 35 minutes, on top of already having a headache did not make the situation better. The only worse thing was that the results came back normal. Which means no one knows what is really wrong with me. My neurologist now wants me to get blood work done to see what exactly is happening.  Great.

All of this on top of the school work I need to catch up on is adding to an already stressed out teenager. I hope everyone else is doing better than I am because if you're not I truly feel for you.

Talk to you later,

-Karin xx