Not a good day on any front

Work, cooking, parenting: I pretty much failed miserably at all of these things today. And that doesn't even count my ENT follow up! Remember back in October when we discovered that my eardrum was ruptured? They told me to check back in December, including a full hearing exam.

Turns out that my hearing drops off to moderate hearing loss in low tones in my left ear. My right ear, by the way, has excellent hearing at 10 decibels or less across the board! She said there is no reason to think my left ear wasn't in likewise excellent condition before the rupture. (No wonder I feel like I can't hear anything. Having conversations with my bass-voiced husband have been especially frustrating lately; now I know why!) She even gave me a copy of the chart, which reads low tones on the left to high tones on the right. It reads 10 dB for the first half or so on the right, then drops off steadily to the left until the lowest tone hits 40 dB. Not good.

When the doctor examined my ear, he said it is not healing at all, not even a little bit. It's no worse, but it's also no better. For some reason, he wants to wait until the weather gets a little bit warmer, so I'm to see him again in March. I can live with a hole in my eardrum for the rest of my life as long as I keep water out of my ears, but if I want it repaired, they will likely have to do a fat tympanoplasty, which will take some fat cells from behind my ear and use that to patch the hole and see if my body will take over the repair from that. He says it has about an 80% success rate. There are other options if that doesn't work, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

I completely forgot to ask if the surgical repair would (likely) restore my hearing. If yes, then I will definitely do it. But if all it will do is patch the hole and my hearing won't ever improve, then I may not bother. I've been obsessive about NOT getting water in my ears since I was a child (it always causes ear infections, even to this day), so that's nothing new. If the surgery won't accomplish anything, then why do it? I'll be sure and ask in March, and I'll let you know. Why can my son and I not have *normal* ears?!

P.S. Luke's eyes are fine now, though after 6 days, he's starting to balk at taking the medicine. Only 4 more days!

Currently feeling: peeved with my ears