Last week I started developing a bit of pain at the top of left jaw bone, just in front of my ear. I thought maybe I slept on on it funny or one of my ear buds may have caused it. It started to get a bit worse over the weekend with pain around the ear and an itchiness in the ear. I began flushing out my ear with peroxide, but it really didn’t help much. My hearing in that ear became a bit muffled too. I also had some slight liquid draining out too. Yum! On Tuesday, I decided to look up the symptoms of “swimmers ear” online to see if maybe it was that. It was no doubt that it was.
I always wear Mack’s silicone earplugs when I swim, mostly to quiet the noise of the splashing water, so I am not sure how I could get this. I have been swimming 2-3 times a week now for the last 4 years and I have never had an issue before. I must have had a leak. I guess I can consider myself lucky to not have had it thus far.
Now my first triathlon is less than two weeks away and I am in the heart of Ironman training, so I started to panic. I am usually anti-antibiotic since I feel they are so overused these days which limits their effectiveness when truly needed. We also get over numerous amounts of them through all the meat and diary we consume(over 80% of all antibiotics produced go towards factory farmed livestock animals). Well, not me personally, but all the meat eating folks out there. I decided this was a case where I needed to make an exception. My swim training has been going well and I don’t want to jeopardize that.
I called my Dr.’s office and made an appointment for later Tuesday afternoon. I apparently haven’t been there in over two years since they have now joined a larger hospital owned organization and I wasn’t “in the system.” So when I arrived they provided me with a laundry list of forms to fill out. Fun! Eventually I completed them and was sent to the smaller waiting room with no TV in it since I was seeing the only Physician’s Assistant(PA) in the office. I guess those seeing a real Dr. get the TV waiting room?
Fortunately the wait was pretty quick and the nurse called me back. We stopped off at the scale along the way and she had me jump on with shoes, belt and everything. That really annoys the hell out of me. That is not my true weight!!! Of course it was about 4.5 lbs higher than what I weighed this morning in my underwear. She took my BP, which was 130/88, naturally higher since I was in the dreaded “Dr’s Office”(dun-dun-DUN!!!!). My BP first thing that morning at home was 122/80. And then I waited for the PA.
The walls in the office were paper-thin and I could hear almost everything said for the patient who was having trouble breathing in the room next to me. I could also get a sense of the PA to. He sounded very matter-of-fact about everything and not a very “warm” individual. My impression was soon confirmed after he came into my room, laptop in hand. No introductions, just plopped laptop down and fired off a bunch of questions at me while focusing his gaze directly at his laptop hammering on the keys. Nice bedside manner dude!
He eventually peeled himself away from the screen and looked in my ears. Yup, good case of Swimmer’s Ear. Back to the laptop again. More questions….pharmacy, etc. He prescribed some drops which I would take 10 drops daily, for 7 days. The script went right to the pharmacy which I could pick up in an hour. Pretty cool. He also said I could probably get back to swimming the next week since I would not want to miss that much training. Thought that was cool too. Ok maybe he isn’t so bad afterall.
I took the drops as soon as I got home from pharmacy. I had a bike ride to do that night, which I did with a cotton ball in my ear. It was kind of nice for muffling the car noise going by. I notified my coach that I may skip my Wed swim this week. I ended up feeling much better the next morning already. By Wednesday night I decided I was going to do my Wed swim on Thursday AM.
I got my swim in on Thursday and my LSD swim on Friday. Crisis averted! My ear has felt progressively better as the week went on, so I think I should be good to go. I may start dropping some alcohol into my ear after swims now just to dry up and possible leaks to help prevent any further issues.
