Good Grief!

I went to the ears, nose, and throat doctor last week because I am having periodic numbness in my right ear. My doc thought my use of adjectives was interesting. He told me normally, people don't come in complaining of numbness in their ear. I told him it felt sort of like when your ears get clogged when flying, and sort of like when you can't shake water out of your ear, but more like when your hand falls asleep except with none of the pins-and-needles thing when it wakes up. My mother described it as heavy, which sort of works, too.

So the doc looked at my ears and my nose and my throat, and decided that everything looked normal. He then had me do a few basic tests. The first one was to stand in place with my eyes shut. Apparently some people can't do that. I said, that was a test? Then he had me march in place with my eyes shut and my hands over my ears. Evidently, you get signals in your ears about your general location. He had me stop but before I was allowed to open my eyes, he asked me if I thought I had drifted. I said yes, but I didn't know in which direction--I knew I had drifted because the tile floor was cold beneath my feet. As it turns out, I didn't drift as much as turn about 45 degrees clockwise. The doc said that indicated an imbalance/imperfection in the information my brain was getting from my ears, but didn't seem especially concerned about it.

Then I had a hearing test. My hearing is completely normal, so for all of you mumblers out there, yes, it really is you, not me.

At this point, the doc created a hypothesis: since I had gained about 10 pounds in the past year, it was possible I was retaining water, and it was messing with the chambers in my ear. (Okay, that's not exactly how he put it, but that's the gist.) So he put me on a diuretic. I was really hoping he was right because I'm struggling to lose the extra 10 pounds. And by struggling, I mean that despite the fact that I have been exercising more and eating less, I have lost exactly 0 pounds. And then for fun, I gained two on the diuretic. This is not only not the plan, but exactly the opposite of what's supposed to be happening! Good grief!