a TMI friday

ready for more health history about Corrie Wachob than you care to know?

no?

good. let's begin.

about a year ago i was volunteering at the brooklyn botanic gardens when my ear popped. immediately after the pop, my hearing felt stuffy and muted.

i told friends about it, and most commiserated that something similar had at one point happened to them. that it was allergies, pollution, aging, etc, but regardless, it would go away soon.

i waited. a few months passed. it didn't go away.

i went to a clinic. had an awful experience  -- cue doctor painfully cramming thingamagig into my ear, stepping back and saying with a befuddled laugh: "i have no idea what it is!" cue corrie bursting into tears -- did the netti pot for a few weeks, then took decongestants for a few after that, and then finally ponyed up the cash to visit an ENT.

* yes, i am among the millions of uninsured Americans who wonder exactly what is so wrong about the greatest country on earth having affordable healthcare for all its people. *

long story short, the ENT said all was normal. an audiologist said the same thing. yet the fuzziness and throbbing persisted. the next step was getting an MRI. which is frightening and expensive sounding, so when all else fails, what do you do?

explore eastern medicine!

which is how i came to be poked with lots of tiny little needles yesterday, as illustrated below:

that's right. those are needles poking out of the top of my head. they were supposed to help free the four (can't remember the real word, so we'll say spirits) spirits that reside there, thus letting my sleep energy flow smoother. (after an intensive pre-needle interview, in which i felt oddly important, he decided to try and help me with my insomnia as well). thus needles in head. or that's the way i remember my acupuncturist explaining it. for some reason it sounds hokey in my retelling.

have you ever had acupuncture? it's awesome. they actually tap the needles into you! i guess i'd thought they just, you know, poked you with them. but they're actually placed in a little tube, the acupuncturist taps it, and you feel this needle go tink tink and then it's in.

most felt like nothing. while the one right behind my ear and in my calf made me nicker. that's right. like a horse, except not in a happy way.

once i was fully stuck, the doctor left me alone for about an hour, which i thought was an absurdly long amount of time to be lying somewhere full of needles, but which drifted by in seemingly five minutes. then the needles came out and i was sent on my way.

i have to say, going in, even the acupuncturist wasn't very hopeful that this would help and well, i can't say that it did. my hearing still feels a little fuzzy in that ear, though in all honesty, i haven't really spoken to anyone today. it definitely didn't help with the insomnia.

so next stop MRI?

mmm. not yet. i might stop at the healthfood store around the corner and talk to the kindly Palistinian owner first. she's the one who told me that my bad skin upon moving to NYC was caused by pollution and that moisturizer in the morning and night, combined with foundation whenever i left the house, would clear my skin right up. and she was right.

at that writer's conference one of the speakers said she was dumbfouned by the amount of information people put in their blogs. too much information, she said.

i'm pretty sure this post counts towards that. but come on. it's TMI friday. so don't say i didn't warn you.