Blogging from the hospital

I got home last night from work and noticed that my left ear felt all hot and a little tender. By 10p last night, like the whole left side of my head, from the top of my ear all the way down to my collar bone, felt swollen and it hurt to move my neck. Since there was no place open that late except the emergency room, I opted to wait til morning. I figured I just had an exceptionally bad ear ache and that I’d pop into the Quick Care place and get some drugs before I went into the office.

So, after not being able to sleep all night, I went into the Quick Care place this morning. I felt like dying, but I usually wish for death when I’m sick, so I wasn’t terribly worried. Well, I wasn’t terribly worried til the doctor took one look at me and offered me vicodin and started writing up the admission papers for the hospital. 🙁 Now by this time, also, I have a violent headache because the swelling feels like it’s crushing my brain… and the doctor didn’t even give me the option of NOT going to the hospital. So I’m fairly certain at this point that this is it. I’m gonna be dead in very short order and should start getting my affairs in order. It probably didn’t help that the doctor said he’s going to have an infectious disease specialist waiting for me over at the hospital.

So yay. My day is officially exciting.

Anyway, I got to the hospital and got settled in… popped some vicodin, got a ton of blood taken, got the IV put in with a bag of antibiotics, took a nice big nap. Saw the infectious disease specialist, etc.

The final verdict is that I have an outer ear infection. Which is very similar to an inner ear infection, but affects the outside of the ear. The reason the doctor at the quick care flipped out is because they usually don’t see outer ear infections in “young and otherwise healthy” patients, but they suspect that my chronic sinus problems make me more susceptible to these things than your average bear.

I was starting to go a little stir crazy because I can only nap so much, and when I asked the nurse about wireless I got a completely blank stare. Fortunately, my mom works at the data center for this hospital, and I called her to find out for sure if there’s anything I can do to get online, and she was fairly convinced there’s wireless here (and lo’ and behold… there is!). So, I’m connected. Can’t get to Twitter because stupid SurfControl blocks it, but I’m on AIM and I can get to my email and stuff.

So it looks like I’m not going to die from a brain infections or anything and since I can get online now I know I won’t die of boredom.

Please feel free to IM me or twitter at me, etc. I’m bored.