Thursday, Jan. 06, 2005
Ear, posted at 5:33 p.m.
Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com Well, that post vacation zen lasted three days. Today was nothing but stress.First, I woke up yesterday unable to hear out of my left ear. Some might remember that this past summer, after swimming, I couldn't hear out of my ear for three days. It happened right after I took a swim, and basically a lump of ear wax impacted on my ear drum. I had to go to an Ear-Nose-and-Throat specialist and have a very painful procedure, complete with blood, done to rid myself of it and restore my hearing.
Ironically, I was going to go swimming yesterday morning. I was all ready for it, even planning my morning gym trip for a 5:30am start time rather than a 6:00am start time, and at the White Marsh Bally's instead of the Towson one. I have ear plugs now, and was going to go for the first time since that happened the last time. Maybe it was a defense mechanism, but I never got to swim. No way am I dunking my head underwater when I already can't hear.
I've spent the last couple of days doing everything the doctor said to do to try to clear the ear. I'll spare you the details. Needless to say, nothing has worked, and now my ear is sore as well as useless.
Teaching with one ear is irritating, to say the least. Everything echoes in my head, and any tiny side conversation causes me to have a kiniption fit. In some ways, my experience has made the kids more polite, quieter. But that's the only benefit. My head has ached by the end of the day both nights, and I cannot tolerate anymore.
It's right before midterms, plus my classroom is as messy as my house, so I can't really take a day off tomorrow to get this taken care of (which I assume will require another visit to the specialist, as well as more pain). So I called up the doctor, and he referred me to an urgent care clinic that will take my insurance. As soon as rush hour dies down, I'm heading over there to sit in a room on my last night off before Sunday. And I'm only sitting in a room in order for them to try things that won't work so they can send me to the ENT specialist tomorrow during my planning period.
Ugh. I'm not too pleased about that all.
The ear thing, and the subsequent headaches and dizziness, has made grading these Odyssey projects difficult and I've now officially came again to the point where I have so much to grade that I don't know where to start. I spent my planning period today writing Letters of Recommendation, which doesn't help matters much. Tomorrow, my kids' pastiches (in which they write a 100-300 line original episode of the Odyssey in the style of Homer) are due tomorrow, and I was hoping I could just grade them without having other stuff piling up in front of it. No such luck.
I'm feeling overworked.