The Balancing Insult

Well...here's a question for you.
If you had a choice between going half-blind and going half-deaf, which would you choose?
Have a ponder on that one, this could be a longish blog.

Initial headline of the day - turned out my digestive system woke up nice and early, so weighed in, and got a pleasant surprise: 17st 6.25 - I actually managed to lose a fartsworth of weigh this week. Whodathunkit? Not me, clearly.

Then - to Cardiff, to meet with a private lughole specialist. Sort of agonised about this for a good long while, my Socialist principles tormenting me.
Bottom line, screw it - I met this guy, paid my money and found out a whooooooole mess o'stuff. He's now going to treat me on the NHS going forward. So...yeah, that works.

Thing is, it should have worked a little while ago.
Breaks down like this. I've had and may still have viral labyrinthitis. I now have pretty severe hearing loss in the right ear. In fact - get this it's sick - my hearing in the right ear may be even worse than it currently looks - apparently when you blast sounds into one ear in a hearing test, it travels over the bone of your skull, so you hear some of it with your other ear!

I may not ever get the hearing back...or I may. The best thing to deal with viral labyrinthitis-induced hearing loss is an aggressive course of steroid. The steroids are most effective after about four days of hearing loss...rather than eight pigging weeks of hearing loss.

The steroids are the centre of my current dilemma. Because of course, just last week or thereabouts, I was told my the retinopathy doctor that I've had bleeds at the back of my left eye, and I absolutely need to keep my blood sugars low. Steroids, in case you missed this, send your blood sugar soaring and haywire.

So - deaf or blind?

I'm gonna talk to one more doctor tomorrow, to make sure I'm doing everything I can do to protect the eyeballs while trying to coax the ear back to productivity and life.

The ear doc was very nice and charming - which of course you rather expect when you're paying for it - but one weird thing kinda blew my mind. He gave me a hearing test, then made me stand and close my eyes with my hands out. Apparently, people with hearing loss often sway one way or the other. I didn't. Then he made me stand with my eyes closed and my hands out and march on the spot. I wondered, briefly, whether I was gonna end up on Youtube. Then he told me to open my eyes.

I'd turned round a full 180 degrees, without ever knowing I was moving.
"What?" I asked. "I mean...what?"
"Besides the hearing loss, you have experienced a severe insult to the organ of balance," he explained.
I blinked.
"Really?"
"Yes," he said. "Monday - hospital, another ear test, in a soundproof booth. Maybe an MRI. Steroids. And then..." He sighed.
"Then we watch you verrrrry closely. And we wait. And we hope..."

Soooo that's a plan then.
Woohoo!