I SUPPOSE I had better write something. I saw a nurse yesterday. A nurse empowered to prescribe. Who looked in my ear and said the infection had gone. She then queried whether I had ever had a perforated eardrum. Which is precisely what I had suspected LAST time (in June) when 2 doctors told me no it definitely wasn't perforated. Even though the thing that eventually cleared the deafness was me burping/hiccupping/whatever with my mouth closed. Which cleared my eustacean tubes (mysterious piping leading from ear to throat) and BANG! ear is totally clear. Which implies the source of the problem was on BOTH sides of my eardrum. So yesterday I popped my ears deliberately and there was a slow whoosh and about 90% of my hearing came back. No way can you clear an external ear problem by doing that, unless the eardrum is perforated. Or, possibly, that popping your ears causes the eardrum to bulge out so far that it actually clears a space in the outer ear canal. Which I consider highly unlikely. The tinnitus is getting quieter and quieter. I have had constant pinnng-piiiiing-pIIIIIIIIng!~~ in my ears since age 17. So I don't let it bother me.
All that is bothering me now is that I feel so down. Kind of physically down. That I have given up drinking all together. Yesterday I had one can of wussy strawberry cyder. About 4% ABV in half a litre is only 2 units. So it's hardly hardcore drinking. And that made me feel heavy-limbed, stomach-achey (because strawberry cyder was breakfast) and generally crap.
Plus my friend Pinxx is confined to a mental unit. Where a blonde Polish schizophrenic got really obsessed by me I'm kind of regretting ever giving her time of day. She says she can tell I am bipolar by the way I move my body (too fidgetty). Also that my parents split when I was very young and I have never got over it. Although it was Pinky who told her I got "really manic" (I would beg to differ; Pinky has never seen me "really manic". When I'm "really manic", which I haven't been since spring 2011, I'm usually too incoherent to leave the house.) Anyway that second bit of information: WHERE DID THAT COME FROM? Is she demon-possessed? Or just very perceptive. I once read somewhere that Schizophrenics are extraordinarily perceptive. Just as many manic-depressives are said to be abnormally creative and clever.
My Mum is on the phone. We are talking about Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. Did you know the character of the State Prosecutor Porfiry was the inspiration for Colombo? The way he says "can I ask you just one more question: a simple man like me wouldn't understand this, but HOW DID MUD FROM THE SCENE OF THE CRIME GET INTO THE TREAD OF YOUR SHOES?" blah blah.
Well I've got to go.
Does any of this have any consequence? When I read back through my terrible blog, it all seems dastardly dull beyond words.........
Illustrated: tinnitus (I've never tried this product but I seriously doubt anything would work, except possibly ginko biloba); Fyodor Dostoyevky ~ a cheerful soul...
IF YOU THOUGHT all German music was techno and Ozzy Osbourne headbanging crap, you'd be wrong. What the music channels actually advertise is like this: Alpine Folk Music. Which is far catchier than Anglo-American folk. Don't ask me why there's a windmill in the background: windmills are mostly from NORTHERN Europe ~ East Anglia (in England), Holland (of course) and Northern Germany ~ where it is FLAT. The Alps are MOUNTAINOUS. Akhkkkkk....
EVERY MORNING I wake up feeling sick. Too sick to drink alcohol. I buy alcohol anyway, pour it out and it just sits there for hours. Then I sup so slowly I don't get drunk at all. It's not banging into walls, double-vision drunkenness I'm after, just a half-intoxicated feeling. Anyway this morning I had to rush to get to the post office. My infected ear is as bad as ever. Amoxocillin pills seem to be doing nothing, so maybe I'll have to use the old spray that made me even more deaf. I walked as rapidly as I could. Which wasn't that fast. I felt dizzy. The world seemed to be swaying. I realized I had forgotten my mobile phone. If I tripped and fell, I felt I would never get up again. Then I'd be dragged into hospital with no phone, no money, no way of getting out with nobody knowing what was wrong, because it was only an ear infection anyway. Is this how all people feel when they get old? Shaky and unsteady and terrified of going down? Or is it just me. I don't think it's the drink, by the way, because I don't drink enough to be an "alcoholic". And I certainly don't have that syndrome where one drink sets a person off and they don't stop until unconsciousness. Never been like that. And I don't think it's the drugs. I haven't touched the "brown" in days... Although I am getting heavy sweats. So heavy I drank twice the normal methadone dose yesterday to see if I could stop them. But it didn't stop them. Should I go to a doctor? By the way, if I felt broadly like this, yet had no symptoms at all to pin it on, I'd assume it was "depression". And I'm starting to feel depressed as well.
O yeah, and I found out by digging through the Polish on the side of the carton, that lime n mint drink is actually a Mojito without the rum...
I'VE BEEN LOOKING for something to drink in preference to cheap white cyder coctails (with lemonade and tropical fruit juice to take away the disgusting taste) ~ "white" cyder means a drink that most people say has never seen an apple. It certainly doesn't taste apply. I say it tastes of drain cleaner. It's the absolute cheapest way of buying alcohol in this country, the street-drinker's favourite. I have to give it up.
So I was in the corner shop getting more cyder when my eye was caught by LIMES. At first I thought it was cactus and lime, because the wording is in Polish. It's actually a mint-and-lime drink and it's very refreshing. It's "only" £1.20 for 2 litres. (I have to say, having had a few sups, that it would make a very good mixer. Just splosh in white rum/vodka and maybe Scotch and you're away...)
I'm only writing about drinks because there's nowt else to say. I'm on amoxicillin pills for my ear. Still as deaf as ever. Can't hear anything when I sleep as I lie on the left side... The phone is full of missed calls...
Well I've gotta go. I'm laden down with frozen food. It's a hot day and if I don't get back it'll all be melting...
EUROPEAN TELEVISION has arrived at last! They finally turned up yesterday, one day and three hours late, put a whacking great dish on my house, drilled yet another hole in the wall ~ there is now a spaghetti junction of wires behind the TV set from 2 satellites, telephone and cable (I don't subscribe to cable). I get so many new channels it took eight sides of A4 to list them all. About 200 in German, 22 in French, 12 in English and a scattering of others in mysterious Eastern tongues. Remember the other day I was moaning about foreign stations not subtitling in English? Well I now do get Chinese documentaries and Korean soaps with English subtitles. I didn't know what to expect from German telly before I got it, but it's better than I thought it would be. Basically I get for free the type of programming you'd have to pay for if you wanted it in English. Lots of diving with the fishes, ice-cave exploration and documentaries about Madonna. Years before we actually had the digital switchover I remember a British government spokesman proclaiming how British multichannel TV would be the best in the world. Well he's a liar. He failed to mention back-to-back Judge Judy,
Coronation and Emmerdale repeats (terrible British soap opera) and endless Jeremy Kyle (famously rude and bigoted talk show host whose programme consists almost entirely of lie detector and DNA tests for rowing lower-class families. I even found a German equivalent to my favourite programme which is called Judge Barbara. She's a criminal court judge with dyed red hair and the witnesses say "Scheiße" a lot. (It's not reality TV, it's actors.) In fact Germany seems thankfully largely devoid of reality TV and what they do have involves far more interesting perpetrators (eg the animals of Frankfurt zoo). I do miss Judge Judy though. If she hadn't been a lawyer, she should have been a hand-model. She has the most beautiful hands in television.
I haven't given up on English TV forever though. How could I when the most important event of the 21st century occurred last night at 9pm on Channel 5 yes DALLAS IS BACK. The only soap I ever watch. That Bobby Ewing is a loser. If you had TWO BILLION barrels of premium-grade crude under your house wouldn't you get drilling away? When brent crude is currently going for £114.55 a barrel? (And a barrel holds 42 gallons; 159 litres.) By the way I think Lorimar are really racist: premiering the series in America on 29 June yet making Britain wait till September 5 ~ as if we are some unimportant backwater when really America is in the middle of nowhere ~ both geographically and economically.
I can't wait till I'm emperor of London. The policies of my government shall be simple: rainbow streetlights and the tallest buildings and fastest trains and low taxes for the rich. I would get rid of the "Green Belt" that is strangling this city and have London expanded in size until the population tops 100 million. I would scrap restrictive building regulations and leave just 2. No tower blocks permitted of less than 150 storeys. No buildings, apart from houses, allowed to be less than 25 storeys. Everywhere would be mixed use. No zoning, which kills cities and leaves dead zones. I would get Boring green spaces like Hyde park transformed into stately formal gardens.
On a more serious note, I would love to study town planning. However my opinions on the matter are so strong (I'm in favour of high-density mixed use with residential properties built on top of businesses) I couldn't handle the powerless, thwarted feeling of having my views ignored. Which is why nothing short of the job-title "Emperor" will ever satisfy me.
I have infection in my ear yet AGAIN and I've just seen a nurse-practitioner who prescribed me antibiotic pills (I don't want to spray anything else into my ears. They've had enough of being tampered with). She also gave me a Seroquel (quetiapine) refill ten days before the due date. I had been taking half doses to make my supply last and already I'm feeling constantly excited over nothing (ie the manic feeling is coming through). When you look up my medical notes "SCHIZOAFFECTIVE DISORDERS" comes boldly through (as if I've got more than one of them). Thankfully "raving junkie" does not. I'm extremely careful not to mention my drug habit, or the fact that I'm still knocking back methadone every day beause I don't want prejudice and I don't want them refusing me sleepers when I need them (I really cannot see a connection between addiction to heroin, which is an opiate and taking sleeping pills occasionally, which are not opiates, never make me high, and cannot substitute for them. And yet my old GP, who was snotty and condescending said "I am not prescribing drugs of addiction!" when I asked for humble ZOPICLONE!!)
Why did I steer all through the controversy on Anna Grace in my last post which was only there to say 1 she has put up Youtubes of herself and 2 she sounds like a cartoon character ~ really cute. And yet there I am ranting about personality disorder issues. Totally irrelevant. And I don't even think I was manic when I wrote that. (Mania being a primary cause of tangential expositions.) I hope Anna isn't annoyed with me. It wasn't meant to be a hatchet job, although it kind of looks like one. Also I insisted in calling her pet Porkshire "Eleanor Rigsby" after "Mr Rigsby" in Rising Damp. Knowing all along that Elle's actual name is Elean or RIGBY ~ after the Beatles' song...
Well I have ranted enough for one day. I really must get back to have Iceland Chunky Cod fillets with American Crisscross Fries and my very own Tomato Surpise (the surprise is that they're chopped up, doused in black pepper and vinegar and... well, that's that. Tomatoes in vinegar are much nicer than tomatoes on their own...)
Illustrated: Judge Barbra Salesch; Judge Judy being a rudy, as per usual; the Burj Dubai, also known as the Burj Khalifa, currently tallest skyscraper in the world putting London's tinsy-winsy 72-storey "Shard" to shame; a satellite dish on a German building; Anna Grace cradling her Porkshire...
Where the shops stay open 24-7 and there's foreign exchange students galore plus amazing television reception!
Best of all, the new place is on the ground floor, with full access to the back garden!
And there's a washing machine ~ thank God.
Plus I can go back to my old methadone clinic, where they know me and where you can actually see a doctor if you're ill. Basically I can't get away from the old place fast enough.
My landlord's handyman has moved half my stuff. Only the itty-bitty things are left: books, CDs, papers, kitchenware and sundries. I'm skipping the Seroquel (antidepressant/antimanic/antipsychotic that zonks me) tonight and staying up as long as it takes. Mark, the handy van driver, will be here for me at 9am sharp.
Once I've moved I'm going straight back to my old druggieclinic to beg an immediate transfer. Wish me luck ...
Only downside to the new area: it's so rife with drugs I've picked free heroin and crack of local pavements on numerous occasions...
On the plus side, the new address is in walking distance of five NA meetings.
I'm not sure: should I take my empty hamsteries with me ? I could hide them in a giant tartan laundry bag ... (If he sees them Mark might report me to the landlord for keeping pets.)
I'd better go and get packing... I am too excited for words!
PS: My hearing returned last night, stayed with me for half an hour this morning until I
sprayed the ear and DMMMMMMMM!! (Tinnitus sound.) I'm instantly deaf again! And stayed deaf all day, until I accidentally burped with my mouth closed: this popped my ear and the hearing returned more crystal sharp than ever! Tell me if I'm being illogical, but doesn't this imply a middle-ear problem? My hearing is gradually getting worse again, but I'm scared of deliberately popping my ear... How could one spritz of fine mist, a fraction of 1ml of medication, make me so profoundly deaf all day? I'm wary of using that spray again until I see a doctor on Friday... Who might finally reveal what is wrong with me!
I HAVE been forced to go to the methadone chemists yet again while feeling like crap. I took 10mg about 7am. Got up at 9, when the methadone should have been working . On a bad day, methadone takes two and a half hours to work. Yet another reason why I think it is CRAP. The clinic still insist that on the days I pick up methadone ~ Monday-Wednesday-Friday that I should drink that day's dose under supervision, like a big baby or a criminal, even though I'm taking the next day's dose home. This means I have to split the unsupervised doses in half, so I'm not running with disgusting sweat when I have to make the ridiculously long trek to the obscure pharmacy this backward clinic insist I go to.
Today it was raining and I felt like crap. The methadone just doesn't feel like it's holding me properly and I don't see that the recent 25mg to 20mg reduction "should" have anything to do with this. When I was on heroin alone I could easily cut the daily dose in half with no ill effects. Why should methadone be any different? O yeah , I know: because methadone is CRAP.
I'm still deaf. My ear is no better. If there was any improvement yesterday, it was marginal, and it seems to have got worse since. If it's no better by tomorrow I'll have to make another doctor's appointment pre-emtively for the end of the week. As much to get a second opinion as anything else.
Being deaf isn't all bad. In fact I was thinking of plugging my good ear just to even it out. I don't miss anything that seems important in not catching what people are saying. Most of what most people say most of the time is mostly crap, anyhow.
Well I'm off now to wallow in more misery. I read the quetiapine (Seroquel) side-effects leaflet again last night: not only does it warn it can make suicidal ideation WORSE in the short-term (quetiapine is a treatment for bipolar depression, mania and schizophrenia) but that i t may interact with what they call "medicines for an infection (like erythromycin or clarithromycin). So whether or how it interracts with the neomycin in my ear spray, i do not know.
I had terrible problems from using a simple miconazole athelete's foot spray. Azole fungicides are another class of contraindicated medication. Miconazole on top of quetiapine made me so ill I stopped taking the quetiapine altogether.
If you're wondering why I feel the need of an antipsychotic when I'm not psychotic it's because I do still get the symptoms at a low grade, and because it's supposed to prevent further episodes and because it's the only antidepressant I know that I can tolerate. Normal antidepressants like Prozac and Remeron/Zispin (mirtazapine) if they don't make me severely agitated, send me sky high into mania, which is not what antidepressants are supposed to do.
As for this ear, I don't expect it ever to get better. I'm starting to hate ears and everything about them. And that's that.
Illustrated: normal ear and middle-ear infection compared. My problem is with the outer ear, as far as I know, because it's on the outer side of the eardrum...
THE DOCTOR looked inside my ear this morning and told me there was hardly any wax in there, and no compacted wax, and that my ear is infected. The eardrum is intact. I'm so deaf on one side, the only way to even it out is to stick a finger in the other ear. No pharmacy had the prescribed antibiotic ear drops in stock. The suppliers have run out and there's a two week wait. So I had to take the prescription back to the doctors and get it changed. I ended up with Otomize spray consisting of dexamethasone (a steroid) and neomycin (an antibiotic) and acetic acid (which is supposed to have antibacterial properties). How a simple infection has made me this deaf I cannot understand. No wonder I had been feeling so panic-stricken and miserable. I really felt that something had gone badly wrong, but kept telling myself not to be so neurotic. Just goes to show you should listen to your inner voice sometimes.
Just to put me off, the leaflet warns: "Excessive use (high doses or prolonged use) of this product on open wounds or damaged skin may cause deafness" ~ ie the spray to treat my deafness could actually cause it!
I'm getting so used to living in a muffled world that if and when my hearing ever does return it's going to sound quite weird. I wish the ear would hurry up and get better. It feels like there's a tree growing in my head, with the roots breaking right through the ear-drum and curling round the cochlea.
My methadone is down to 20mg as of today. Such a tiny swig it's hard to believe that so little will do anything at all. This dose is one SIXTH the starting dose at this clinic. If and when I get down to 10mg I think I'll feel like I've "achieved" something. What am I saying? I won't have really achieved anything until I'm OFF that rot altogether. What on earth I'm supposed to do then, I've no idea... What do normal people do except not rely on opiates to get through every day...? I can't even remember ...
Illustrated: infected and healthy eardrums
VIDEO
Grace Jones's ridiculous hula-hoop performance at the Diamond Jubilee concert
