I would not say I am PANICKING, but I would say I am in An Episode of Feeling Panicky. Part of it was set off by the recent experience with the police, where they were SO polite and SO pleasant (and I am a middle-aged white woman thoroughly socialized to respect men/authority; I read an article awhile back that said no other category is as indulged by the police), and I was made personally aware that I can talk/reason all I want, but the police get to make all the decisions. And the “talk/reason all I want” is only at their extreme indulgence: they could have told me to step aside, ma’am, and they could have skipped the ma’am; it was only by their indulgence that I was allowed to talk and explain into their nodding, patient, kind, indifferent ears for awhile while they treated me nicely and waited until they could do what they were going to do anyway.

That powerless feeling (combined with the awareness of just how much worse it could be than a powerless feeling) seems to have suffused a number of everyday/unrelated things. Already I have been feeling partnerless in my marriage in terms of chores/tasks/worries, and very aware that, after over twenty-five years of working on it, talking and explaining while someone nods nicely and indulges me but nothing changes, my two options are stay or leave and that all the options in between have been exhausted/eliminated; that is a powerless feeling. Already I have been feeling overwhelmed by the Extra Stress and Time-Sensitive list items (taxes, FAFSA forms, Henry college search, Henry driving lessons) that I (we) should be doing but I am not doing, day after day; that is a panicky feeling. Last night I lay awake; each time I’d start to drift off, I would think of something (“THE TAXES!”) and jolt awake, and then lie there wondering why our government makes things so hard and stressful for us (taxes, the FAFSA, laws that make life considerably worse).

In that powerless/panicky mode, other things, even much more minor things, can get swept up into the mess, tumbleweed-style. Maybe I mean dust-bunny style. Do tumbleweeds pick things up? Does anything pick up other things in the way I mean? Well, what I mean is that in a mental state like this, where there are truly important things to worry about (marriage, tax deadlines, authoritarianism), things such as “how irritatingly packed-in my sweaters are, and how I should really go through and get rid of some” can somehow get SUCKED IN to the roiling mass as if JUST AS IMPORTANT. This morning, feeling RIDICULOUS, I got rid of four sweaters and five long-sleeved shirts. Did I set up college tours for Henry, or teach him to drive? No. Did I get the FAFSA done? No. Did I get rid of several of the sweaters I don’t like but keep wearing because I am foolishly trying to “save” the sweaters I do like, plus most of the long-sleeved shirts I’d thought I’d wear but never ever do? Yes. Are my sweaters stressing me out less now? Yes.

I also signed the agreement with the tax preparer. I don’t want to use this tax preparer anymore: I trust her work, but she puts the taxes off until the last day or two, with me worrying the whole time that somehow our envelope of tax stuff has gotten lost/forgotten (WHAT THEN??), and then we have to scramble to take one of the few last-minute available times she has for us to come in and sign them. I don’t think she wants to do our taxes: I think she is using the “If you are a professional and there is work you don’t want, raise your price until it is worth it for you to do it” method, which, good for her, truly truly I mean that, our taxes are horrible and made me cry for literally hours every year when I was doing them. But this means that when she sent this year’s estimate, and it is a price that makes me think I MUST either do the taxes myself OR choose a different preparer, the estimate then sits in my bill-paying cubby for a month while I wonder if this level of stress really does relieve the stress of doing the taxes myself.

Last night, lying awake, I thought, “You have given yourself a full month to either find a new tax-preparer or commit to doing the taxes yourself, and you have done neither of those things. You do not have a partner who is going to do anything about this or even think about it. Action needs to be taken, BY YOU, TOMORROW: either call someone else tomorrow; or get a batch of forms and start filling them out tomorrow; or sign the stupid agreement and pay the Inertia Tax tomorrow.” This morning I signed the form and put it in the mail with an Inertia check. And I put the bag of sweaters/shirts in the Goodwill pile. And I had a LARGE breakfast: at times like this, sustenance is important. And I wrote to you. And now I will go do the grocery-shopping.

We had something somewhat upsetting happen yesterday. Paul was on a walk and discovered an older man lying by the side of the road. A car pulled over, and Paul and the driver helped the man up. The man seemed disoriented at first (was resistant to the idea that there was any need to get up; tried to refuse help), but, once up, seemed much more alert, claimed he had just fallen and was fine now, and said his truck was parked right over there with his two little dogs inside, and he would just drive home; he said he lived right up the street. Paul and the driver were like nooooooooope we are doing any plan except that one, and helped him into a nearby business (it was below freezing out). Paul texted me, and I came over with the car, in case I and/or the car could be of any help. Paul wanted us to drive the guy home, but (1) then the guy wouldn’t have his truck, and might not remember where the truck was and/or might have trouble retrieving it; (2) there were two small dogs in the truck; (3) Paul and I are not in any way qualified to assess the difference between “drunk” and “drunk plus another medical crisis” and “something that looks like drunk but is in fact a medical crisis.”

Someone at the business had called 911, and instead of an ambulance arriving, police arrived. [Edited to add: Because it is coming up repeatedly in the comments section: The officers did not seem to be familiar with the man.] They did not check the man to see if he’d hit his head when he’d fallen, or do any other medical checking or questioning; one officer instead immediately started trying to get the guy to say he’d been driving under the influence. (There are several restaurants/bars serving alcohol within a block of where we were. It is legal to drive into town and then drink in those establishments; it is legal to then walk outside. It is legal to have a drink and then have an unexpected medication reaction or unexpected medical event which causes you to fall to the ground.) Perhaps I should not have gotten involved, but I was already involved, and the ingenuous tone of the questioning (“Wait…sir, I don’t understand: how did you and your truck get here?”) gave me an immediate surge of adrenaline. I interrupted the attempt to get the man to incriminate himself, and asked if there was any merit to the idea of us driving the man, his truck, and his dogs home. After all, if the police were confident this was in no way a medical event, it seemed much simpler for us to just deliver everyone back safely to where they were supposed to be. This led to a long exchange I knew I would not win, but I was hoping that I was mistaken at how things were going down, and that at any minute an ambulance would arrive and that it would turn out the police were merely first on the scene. An ambulance did not arrive. The police took the man away, saying he would be in protective custody for four hours, and telling us the small dogs “would be fine” in the truck, in below-freezing temperatures, in the coming darkness, for those four hours. They took my information, as if they had any possible reason for doing so; I gave them my information, even though I know better, because I am apparently incapable of disobeying authority figures. (Though I appear to be developing a new ability to question them, so there is hope for further progress in the future!)

Paul walked over there an hour and a half later, to check on the dogs, and the truck/dogs were gone, so our hope is that the man was able to call someone to come get them. The whole thing leaves me, today, going over it again and again in my mind, wishing I’d said/done something different at absolutely every stage.

I have finally been to an ENT about my ear/etc. that has been causing problems since the end of December.

I don’t know if I ever updated that the oral antibiotic reduced the pain and pressure and suffering HUGELY, really I do not want to underplay how much it helped restore me to the land of the living—but it nevertheless felt worrisome that I continued to have aches/twinges in the ear as well as in my cheek/teeth/jaw (SINUS), and have continued to feel like I can’t hear well out of that ear: I often feel as if it needs to pop and/or I’m listening to a seashell, and there are lots of pops/crackles.

I will say that one of the big reliefs about Having Been To an ENT is that I no longer need to fret about whether I should go to an ENT. Another big relief is that now I HAVE an ENT: if something happens again, or if it continues in the present case, I have an ENT to call, instead of having to hurdle the hurdle of finding one.

Something that is not at all a relief: the stories about people who saw an ENT, got an “It’s fine!” diagnosis, and Somehow Knew That Diagnosis Was Wrong, and so they confidently/assertively pushed to see other, better ENTs until they got the Diagnosis That, If Missed, Would Have Resulted in Permanent Hearing Loss!! I don’t want to say I will NEVER be someone who, having consulted a medical expert, will confidently reject that expert’s diagnosis and will continue to consult other medical experts until I get The Real Diagnosis I, Not a Medical Expert, Somehow Sensed was the real diagnosis. Because who knows: I have heard many stories about the transformative effects of menopause! But I will say that at this point, it seems UNLIKELY I will ever be that person. And so, after I anxiously (confidently asserted!) to the ENT that I was afraid I might have something that, if left untreated, would lead to scary hearing loss, and she said no, everything seemed okay, that is where I’m stopping. But with lingering anxious feelings that I should be SOLDIERING ON UNTIL I GET THE SCARY DIAGNOSIS I HAVE SO RICHLY FEARED.

I was pleased, after several commenters mentioned that ear pain could be caused by Something Bad in the throat, that the ENT said that ear pain can be caused by Something Bad in the throat. None of the four doctors I’d seen before (two Urgent Care and two at my usual doctor’s office) seemed to have heard of that, since none of them were interested in my throat. This ENT spent an AWKWARDLY long time feeling my neck/jaw, and also looked in my mouth and under my tongue and in my throat. She had me do various things with my face; I can’t remember all of them, but it was things such as “big smile,” “raise your eyebrows,” etc. Nothing challenging, but the sort of thing that can still feel like pop-quiz-hotshot when it’s rapid-fire and you’re not expecting it and haven’t rehearsed.

She was interested to know if I’d had ear infections / ear tubes as a child, and I knew I’d had ear infections, but I didn’t know about ear tubes. I obviously should have ASKED MY PARENTS AHEAD OF TIME, because it turns out I had ear tubes AT LEAST ONCE, MAYBE TWICE. This makes me feel like sending a follow-up postcard to the ENT.

She had another doctor in the practice do a hearing test while I was there. The results came back “Normal age-related hearing loss.” Which. I mean. How do they know it’s age-related, and not because of the infection? Even if the loss is “normal” “for my age,” what if without the infection I would have had SUPERIOR NO-LOSS hearing for my age?? I asked about that, and the second doctor was a little shruggy; she said, well, they didn’t have a baseline test from me from before the infection, so they can’t know. Okay. But if. Then it seems like. And so. But both doctors seemed to feel like the hearing test was good news. They think I FEEL as if I can’t hear normally, but that I CAN hear normally (for my age). My family and co-workers may wish to give the doctors some notes on that topic, considering how often I have had to have them repeat things the last few weeks.

The ENT said there were a few other things that could be concerning with these symptoms, and that she didn’t see any sign of those things; but that if I wanted her to, she could put a camera up my nose and take a look around to rule those things out just in case. She said it would be uncomfortable, and she thought it would be just as valid to wait and do that later if needed. I said, “YES PLEASE PUT THE CAMERA UP MY NOSE RIGHT NOW.” Not because I was so eager to have an uncomfortable camera up my nose, as I am sure you instinctively realize. But because I knew from experience that if I turned down ANYTHING THE SPECIALIST OFFERED, I would later, in the comfort of my home, be wondering WHY I SAID NO TO WHAT WAS OFFERED, ONCE I HAD DONE THE HARD PART AND MADE THE APPOINTMENT AND GOTTEN MYSELF THERE, AND NOW I WILL HAVE TO MAKE A NEW APPOINTMENT IF I WANT TO GET THAT THING THAT WAS OFFERED WHICH I AM NOW WORRIED I SHOULD HAVE SAID YES TO.

It was, as advertised, uncomfortable but quick. First there was a bitter-tasting nose spray, to numb things up; she left that to take effect while I sat in lonely anticipation for perhaps 10 minutes, playing Pokémon Go on my phone. I am not sure how long the actual camera-up-the-nose part took, because my perception of time gets extremely warped when I am breathing slowly and carefully as instructed AND IT FEELS AS IF SOMEONE IS MOVING SOMETHING AROUND BEHIND MY FACE WHERE NOTHING BUT MY THOUGHTS AND OBSERVATIONS SHOULD BE. Maybe one minute total? Possibly two minutes? She had me do a few things while she looked, but I can’t remember all of them because I was in a sort of calmly panicked fugue state; I remember at one point she had me say “eeee,” because I remember it felt weird to do that, and my voice sounded weird, POSSIBLY BECAUSE OF THE CAMERA INSIDE THE BACK OF MY FACE. She said everything looked okay, and she could comfortably rule out the Several Scary Things.

The ENT says she suspects I had an ear infection and a sinus infection, and that because I was also fighting off a bad flu/Covid virus, my body was not as quick as might be hoped to respond to the challenge. She seemed unpanicked by the level of pain I’d experienced. She said it can take up to three months for the tubes/tunnels/reservoirs/whatevers to be fully clear and normal again, and that it is normal to still have twinges/aches and a clogged/seashell feeling. She said something about eustachian tubes, and pressure adjustments, and things that can make it feel as if the ear is clogged/compromised even if it’s fine. She said to keep using Flonase, because that can help it clear up. She said to give it another six weeks, and if it is still not normal, I should come on back to see her because there are some more-invasive things she can do.

I do like that I have a “come back if not by” date. This is something I have learned to ask of every specialist, so that when I call I can say “Dr. Ent said that I should come back if….”

Happy Valentine’s Day to us all, and I hope you are having the kind of Valentine’s Day you prefer! I brought Fun Dip classroom valentines to work, feeling a little silly but then glad I’d done it. One coworker said “Ah, this brings me back to my youth!” and we had a pleasant talk about our childhood candy experiences.

We both feel, without going so far as to look into it and find out, that candy was relatively cheaper in our childhood than it is for current children. She remembered being easily able to buy candy, chips, and a soda with pocket change. I remembered candy bars being 25-40 cents, depending on my age (25 cents more toward elementary school, 40 cents more toward high school), and if I bothered to check those figures or check an inflation calculator I’m guessing that doesn’t translate to the $1.59-2.29 I see now, but maybe it does. We also remembered the wide variety of items available in the 1-cent, 5-cent, 10-cent range, and wondered if those things are still sold in stores we just don’t happen to shop at (or maybe we’re not looking in that section anymore): little boxes of Mike & Ike’s, Lemonheads, Boston Baked Beans; packets of two Dinosour Eggs or a single Giant Chewy Sweetart; Tootsie Rolls; Tart ‘n’ Tinys; a Sweetart lollipop made of two colors of pressed powder; Swedish fish, which we both remembered being sold UNWRAPPED IN BINS FOR PEOPLE TO PICK UP WITH THEIR HANDS AND THEN PUT ONTO THE BARE COUNTER. I myself shopped at a store that was endlessly patient with children endlessly browsing the candy; they’d put our items into small brown paper bags and fold over the tops, and I remember the Treasure feeling of carrying that home.

Where was I? Oh, yes: Valentine’s Day. I gave a Fun Dip packet to my boss, even knowing she avoids dyes, because it seemed like the other options (giving her something different from everyone else; not giving her anything; rethinking the whole idea and trying to customize a 25-cent valentine to each coworker’s preferences) were bad options, and because after spending some time hand-wringing those options I thought “Wait: this is a silly 25-cent workplace valentine, anyone who doesn’t want to eat it can toss it directly into the trash and it doesn’t matter one bit, it is not worth anywhere near this level of thought”—and, as it turned out, she seemed unaccountably pleased by it, almost touched? Reminding me that is is hard to know what small thing can etc. etc.

I have put out the giant Hershey Kisses for the two Home children, along with some assorted candy left over from making care packages for the Away children. I have filled a heart-shaped bowl with more leftover candy. I put a pack of heart-shaped Reese’s peanut butter cups on Paul’s desk. I am wearing a heart t-shirt, and heart-patterned Converse high-tops. I have some See’s to eat. Tonight we are going to watch Valentine’s Day, a movie I noticed at the library and, considering how much I like an ensemble cast, can’t believe I’ve never seen. It is…not well-reviewed.

I’ve been feeling like I am no longer a person who needs a lot of mental/emotional support during the dark/cold season. I am so improved! I no longer feel DESPERATE for flowers every time I go to the grocery store! I am no longer dragging myself to my desk and forcing myself to turn on my light therapy lamp and heated chair cover!

You know how it’s common for people to get on a psychiatric medication and then feel better in a specific way that makes them decide they do not need the medication and never DID need the medication? Like, they don’t think “Oh, wonderful, the medication is working beautifully, I will keep taking it!,” they instead think, “I am doing fine and I feel normal; it turns out I did not need the medication after all!” That’s what I suspect is going on, but with lighted birch trees and flameless candles and heated office-chair covers and so forth.

I have the birch trees and candles set up all year, even when it’s summer and I don’t need them—so all I need to do when the evening starts happening earlier is put in new batteries, and I have automatic supplemental light. I have white string lights up around the living room all year now, so all I have to do is start plugging them in. I leave the heated chair pad attached to my desk chair. I am in the habit of cruising through the flower department at the grocery store to see what’s good/cheap, so in winter I don’t have to make a special effort to remember to do that. There are tulip/daffodil/peony bulbs planted in the yard, so there is an automatic spring thing to look forward to. I have Hopeful Spring t-shirts (tulip in kelly green, tulips in grass green, daffodils in baby blue, Hello Sunshine in lemon yellow) in my closet, ready to start wearing right about now.

It’s true the candles and trees and string lights get a little dusty being up all year, but for me the key is having things ALREADY SET UP: by the time I need those things, it will be too hard to put them into place. An affectionate dusting can happen while I am already feeling okay, and dusting is easier to do Whenever.

The little heart ornaments I mentioned in the last post arrived today, and they are so perfect for the little lighted birch trees, and represent such EXTENSIVE research and effort to find The Right Thing, that, especially in light of yesterday’s exhortation to take Valentine’s Day action along non-romantic pathways, I am spurred to take such action.

This will be a giveaway of one set of on-sale lighted birch trees plus one set of heart-shaped ornaments that work perfectly on them, so that you will see how right I am about that combination. I will send them to you, for Valentine’s Day.

The giveaway is open to (once again apologies to everyone living outside the U.S., it’s not you it’s the U.S. postal service) people with U.S. mailing addresses. If you do not yourself have a U.S. mailing address but you KNOW someone with a U.S. mailing address you would like to give to me to send the trees/ornaments to (I can say Happy Valentine’s Day from me, or I can say it from you), you can enter. To enter, leave any comment, including, say, “<3!” or “Entering!” No need to be fresh or creative. If you find yourself tongue-tied at such a moment, as I do, you can say one thing you are doing for Valentine’s Day for someone you are not romantically involved with, including for yourself. Feel free to turn it into a little vent about how your significant other does not do anything for Valentine’s Day, if applicable. You can also leave a comment but say “but don’t enter me,” if you like to participate but you already have the trees/ornaments and so do all your friends, or you don’t have any U.S. address I can mail them to, or I guess there could be a third option but I can’t think of anything?

We will run this for let’s say three days, because Edward is home this weekend for a routine medical treatment for Crohn’s so I will not be around much until Sunday, let’s call it Monday. Sometime Monday I will draw a name, or maybe I will do it Sunday night, let’s see how I feel when I get home from bringing Edward back to college. I don’t want to miss the sale on the trees, or have the heart ornaments sell out. Well, so maybe I should do the drawing Saturday night from the hotel?? That might be fun! Why don’t we just say “Enter promptly, and we’ll see when the drawing happens! Maybe tomorrow, maybe not until Monday!” I’ll update the post when the drawing has happened, so you won’t have to wonder. [Update: I HAVE CHOSEN, and have emailed the winner.]

There will be a set of ornaments, which will be either like the color combination I actually got or the color combination I linked to when the first ones were sold out and not available (you can specify which you’d prefer, if you have a preference and if both are available at the time the contest ends! I am not actually sure which set would be BETTER now that I’ve seen the ones I ordered: the white gets a little lost in the birch/light, but I do still like the white ones):

(image from Amazon.com)

(image from Amazon.com)

And there will be a set of the lighted birch trees, which I decorate with my smallest Christmas ornaments at Christmas, and now with heart ornaments for Valentine’s Day, and I have plans for getting Easter ornaments for spring:

(image from Amazon.com)

As I mentioned the last time I posted about these trees with their listing photo, I feel the photo DOES NOT AT ALL do them justice. (Is that SHOWER TILE behind them?? why are there, like, three pine cones just sitting there?) A dear friend of more than half my lifetime told me to “Order them. Trust.”—and I STILL DID NOT ORDER THEM for quite some time, because of the picture. And now that I have them in my home, if anything happened to them I would IMMEDIATELY replace them, because they are CRUCIAL to my fall/winter happiness. I have also bought them for several friends. One of my favorite things is that if you press the little button on the base TWICE, they will come on for six hours every day at that same time, shutting themselves off automatically. I like to have them come on at about 4:30.

Oh good morning! It is February! Didn’t it seem as if all the jokes about January were absolutely true? I missed half of it by being sick and it still felt as if there was another six weeks left to get through before it was done!

February 1st is a good opportunity for me to remind those of you in the We Cheerfully Repurpose Valentine’s Day To Be About Friends and the Kids and Ourselves Club to make sure you make some sort of arrangements. At the very minimum, let’s get some candy/cupcakes/cookies in the house and pick up some grocery-store tulips/mums/roses before the prices go bonkers. I pre-ordered some See’s to be delivered a few days before Valentine’s Day, and when I saw the order notification in my email the next morning I felt elation and joy. I used to order the heart-shaped box, but I feel like they are overcharging for it now; fortunately I find it difficult to throw away heart-shaped boxes, so I can transfer the chocolates over to a saved heart box when they arrive. Do you sometimes feel like your silly fool heart is the most ridiculous thing that ever was? Do you other times feel as if your silly fool heart is not actually asking for much? Don’t forget to put flowers on the grocery list! Trader Joe’s had some $5 pots of planted tulip bulbs.

I am drinking coffee this morning out of the cute heartsy mug I got for my wine-and-appetizers group members for Galentine’s Day a number of years ago, and I am so glad I thought to get one for myself as well, because I think of my friends every single time I use the mug, and also because I haven’t seen such cute heartsy mugs since that year. I am trying to decide if I am going to do anything for Galentine’s Day this year, either for the wine-and-appetizers group or for other friends. Some years I feel like it, and some years I do not, and it is not yet clear which kind of year this will be. I know, we are running out of time to decide.

Similarly, I am trying to decide about co-worker gifties. A year or two ago I got a classroom pack of Fun Dip packets, on the assumption that we were all about the right age to appreciate the retro fun of that, and it did seem to go over well.

(image from Target.com)

Except for one coworker who said “Wow, Swistle, THANK YOU so much; gosh, you just ALWAYS, just, I mean, EVERY holiday, you’re just ALWAYS…with the…wow, thanks!,” in a way that made me feel like I was vastly overdoing it and should please knock it off. But, like, only Christmas, plus Valentine’s Day, that’s it! And it’s not like I’m getting everyone a dozen roses and a heart-shaped box of chocolates and making it super awkward! The Fun Dip pack was $5 and there was enough in it to cover almost 20 co-workers with a few extra for me to eat! Like twenty cents each, that doesn’t feel too over-the-top! And several other co-workers do small things for Valentine’s Day, too! Anyway, nothing is standing out to me this year as being the equivalent of the Fun Dip.

I like wearing seasonal shirts to work, so I bought a new shirt to wear to work during the first half of February, along with the big rose shirt (I have it in pink) and the rainbow heart shirt (I have it in Heather Charcoal) I already own:

(image from Amazon.com)

I ordered an attempt at some little heart-shaped ornaments to hang on the little lighted birch trees that significantly improve my winter low-daylight hours and have looked a little sad and bare since I took off the Christmas ornaments (those little lighted birch trees are on sale right now for $19.99 if this might be your buying moment).

(image from Amazon.com)

I have the usual giant Hershey’s Kisses for the kids.

(image from Target.com)

I bought four, originally, because Rob has been so clear about not wanting THINGS and not wanting GIFTS and not wanting TREATS; and because what used to be the U.S. postal SERVICE is now being run like a court-the-big-corporations-but-strip-the-citizens-for-profit business, so it now costs almost $20 to mail a small box to where Rob is, and so maybe we’d all be happier if I didn’t. But then I thought, even with Rob’s stated preferences IN GENERAL, it still seems like it would be erring on the wrong side of things to withdraw childhood/sentimental traditions without CHECKING. It was Young Rob himself, after all, who started the Giant Hershey Kiss Valentine’s Tradition, and kept it going for many years, and was NOT interested in discussing alternatives. So I emailed, asking if he felt warm sentimental feelings about the tradition or if he’d just as soon skip it, and he emailed back saying he could go either way—which seems pretty tepid from an outside point of view, I agree, but given previous answers to gift-giving options was the relative equivalent of a vigorous thumbs-up, so I am sending it.

(image from Target.com)

I greatly dislike books written as a series of emails or letters or transcripts. I don’t enjoy trying to figure out codes or mysteries. I generally dislike an unreliable narrator. Still, I liked The Twyford Code (Target link, Amazon link) enough to recommend it to family members AND choose it as my Staff Pick at the library.

This is one of the reasons I like libraries so much: I would never, never, never have paid money for this book; but when I was desperate for books to read and was having one of those days where I wander up and down the rows and nothing looks good, I could take it home for free to try the first thirty pages just in case. And then end up liking it, against all odds!

Paul and I have sometimes tried to figure out what we would do if there weren’t libraries. For sure we would have to have a book budget—but it wouldn’t be anywhere near the estimate our library gives us when they tell us “how much we’ve saved” by using our library, because if libraries vanished we would not turn around and purchase all these same items full-price from a bookstore: we get lots and lots of items ONLY because we can borrow them for free. Plus, if libraries vanished, my guess is that there would be a new and robust book-trading community, as well as fresh interest in used-book stores. We’d have to figure something out, but so would a lot of other people, and that would help. (Let’s keep libraries, though: that seems better.)

*Swistle appears before you wearing lab coat*: Keto for Ears was not the immediate, clear success one might have hoped for.

The good news (for me) is that the adjustment back to keto was nothing: after several weeks off, I was expecting some re-entry pains, and there were none—possibly because I am still in the “I HAVE A NEW LEASE ON LIFE!!” stage of illness-recovery, where I am so fervently appreciating things such as “breathing through my nose” and “being able to do more in a day than shower” that I feel pretty good no matter what.

The not-good-not-bad-just-data news is that I did not experience any swift, clear ear relief. There could be many reasons for this: (1) it hasn’t been long enough; (2) the inflammation is not the main source of pressure/pain after all; (3) this is not the kind of inflammation keto helps with; (4) who knows, some other thing, I’m not actually a scientist.

It was especially disappointing because I’d thought of ANOTHER reason to think it might help: the keto diet can be helpful for people with acid reflux (like me!), depending on their own roster of acid-generating foods (if it’s “meats and cheeses,” keto will not help). On days I take off from keto, I generally need to take two of my daily acid-management pills, instead of the usual one pill. And ears can experience symptoms of acid reflux, because everything is connected up in there. (Speaking of which, did you know a light, persistent cough can be a symptom of acid reflux? I’d thought I was developing asthma, which runs in the family, because I had a light, persistent cough unrelated to illness, and I coughed more whenever I laughed. Nope: it was acid reflux. It went undiagnosed for awhile because I kept saying no to questions about experiencing heartburn.) So I’d wondered if maybe the acid from my non-keto eating was percolating up in my ears and increasing the irritation. But apparently not, because I have switched back to keto AND I am taking two of my daily acid-reflux-management pills per day to hopefully prevent me from getting an ulcer from all this ibuprofen, and still there is no change to the ears.

Well! I had much better luck with a second experiment, which was “Let’s see if Swistle, who normally cannot assert herself with authority figures, can leave this fourth doctor appointment with either an oral antibiotic or a referral to an ENT.” Success! I have a prescription for augmentin, which I will take twice a day for ten days. I have just taken my third dose. It is too soon for me to appear before you in a lab coat to report results.

If this does not work, my next stop is an ENT. Because what worried me most about my (fourth) doctor appointment is that the doctor said my ear didn’t look too bad. She said the ear canal was a little pink but not red/”angry” and that the ear drum was “not bulging” and…I can’t remember if she said it was “a little opaque” or something similar, but anyway, her tone was that actually everything looked pretty okay in there, as if the ear drops had helped considerably. SHOULDN’T THAT WORRY HER, when a patient has been describing pain the way I was describing pain (“scary” / “keeps me from sleeping” / “wakes me up every night” / “I am taking four ibuprofen at a time and it is not enough” / “I have looked with temptation at the extra prescription painkillers I shouldn’t have saved from previous medical situations but did save”)? Shouldn’t she think, “Wait: if what I’m seeing here doesn’t line up with the reported pain levels, what is it I’m NOT seeing?” But I don’t think most doctors think that way. I think most doctors, in this situation, think that if what they can observe doesn’t line up with the reported pain, then the pain is misreported. My hope (lessened somewhat by a coworker’s recent experience with a shruggy, listless ENT) is that an ENT would have more of a Detective frame of mind.

I wish I could see Edward’s pediatric ENT. He was the kind of doctor who gets his teeth into an issue and CANNOT LET GO until he has answers. He kept Edward in the hospital for ten days, which involved multiple and vigorous fights with our insurance company (he mentioned that he himself had to speak at length to someone high up in the insurance company, and finally had to pull rank about WHO KNOWS MORE ABOUT WHAT A CHILD NEEDS MEDICALLY, ME OR YOU??), because he felt something wasn’t right, and he wasn’t going to stop pursuing it until he felt it WAS right. (And he was correct about something still being wrong. That seems like an important detail.)

Well. If wishes were etc. Perhaps I will find an ENT who is just as knight-like! We need a gender-neutral term for knight-like. Just as…valiant? No. Terrier-like? That’s more what I’m going for. I liked the “riding into battle” feeling of the word knight, but I like the implied teeth of a terrier. Assuming that’s what terriers are like. Possibly I am thinking of another breed.

My goal is to keep diet-related talk very very low around here. There will be diet-related talk in this post, if you wish to skip it. I will not be hurt; I will understand: I fairly often skip other people’s diet-related posts. If it helps with the decision-making process, this will be more about “diet as in what/how I eat”—in this case, as it pertains to being ill. There will be absolutely no talk of weight gain or loss. Okay, here we go now.

You may remember that for various reasons I normally eat a keto diet. In a typical week, I eat keto foods six days per week, and have one day off to eat everything I thought of longingly the previous week. If there is a holiday, or my friend group is getting together, I will take an additional day off; for Christmas, I typically take at least three days off; when we went to England, I took that entire time off. My body has gotten pretty accustomed to this, and is good with re-entry: you may have heard that when people switch to a keto diet they get “keto flu” and feel crummy for a few days as their bodies transition from one source of energy to another; at this point (6.5 years in) my body is more like “oh this again” and makes the change-over pretty snappily. Sometimes when I take a lot of days off (like when we went to England) I will notice a day of transitional crankiness, but I know most of the tricks for alleviating it (eating plenty; drinking plenty, especially Powerade Zero; plenty of salt; remembering that it’s temporary/diet-related and not because everything is terrible), so it’s not a big deal.

I bring this up because starting two days into this 3-week+ illness, I stopped trying to eat anything resembling keto. For two days my usual foods were basically fine, but as I got sicker it was not working: I needed buttered toast, and I needed chicken rice soup, and I needed regular ginger ale, and I needed applesauce, and none of those things are permitted on keto. Pretty much every diet has an “And actually this way of eating is HEALTHIER for you!!” angle it tries to sell, but for me personally, eating keto does not work or feel healthy when I am Quite Sick. Thinking ahead, I have wondered if it will not work for me as I get older and more medically fragile. We shall cross that bridge etc.

Well. My point is that I now feel well enough to go back to my usual way of eating. But I’ve been putting it off, because it is more pleasant to eat whatever I want; and also because while I was sick but on the road to recovery I made some heartening/sustaining foods (Mairzy’s Baked Oatmeal, for example), and had Paul bring me some sustaining foods from the store (big squishy deli rolls and deli meat; seeds-and-grains bread for toast; applesauce; pineapple chunks; pudding) and wanted to eat the rest of them and not waste them. Also because, once a person is off keto, they are OFF-off (there’s no “on it, but ate a brownie and need to adjust” as there is with, say, Weight Watchers), and tacking just one more day onto the Off streak can feel like not a very big deal.

Here’s what tipped it for me. I have been having some intermittent and distressing ear pain/pressure, even after three separate doctor visits and two separate prescriptions. Paul and I were discussing it, and he was researching ears and how they work, to see if there was anything else we could try at home. I recalled that the doctors had mentioned that one issue I was having was INFLAMMATION: it’s not necessarily that my ear is filled with fluid, but more that it is all swelled up and sore in there; the doctors said I should take ibuprofen, specifically, because ibuprofen will help reduce inflammation (acetaminophen, they said, will only reduce pain). So the things Paul was finding out about DRAINING ears (I’m sorry, this is icky but I think I’m done saying icky things now) might not apply.

That was when Paul said, “Wait: didn’t you start keto because it’s supposed to reduce inflammation?” And I was like: “!” Because, yes. And because when he said that, it occurred to me that when I walked into the doctor’s office a few days ago, my knees were hurting with every step, and I was thinking it was because I have walked no further than the distance between my bed and the recliner for three weeks. But it was 6.5 years ago while on a walk with Henry that I thought “I can barely walk with this knee discomfort, and I am too young for knee replacements” and impulsively tried keto, not believing it would work but believing it was worth a shot. And although it was no miracle, it DID significantly reduce joint pain for me, and I no longer had trouble going on walks with Henry.

So perhaps it would also reduce the EAR kind of inflammation? Maybe, maybe not. But since I was intending to get back onto keto any day now ANYWAY, this idea made it motivating to do it now and find out. I am still on day one, so it is too soon to know. My ear feels pretty okay right now, but the pain was already intermittent.