I suppose I should not be surprised that 8-ish days of almost constant swimming could be a problem for someone who rarely swims. I haven’t had an ear infection since early elementary school so I completely forgot what they feel like. Funny ear feelings arose when I woke up on our second Monday here. I felt like I had water in my ear so just tried to ignore the weird hearing. When it started to hurt I just assumed there was a lot of water. I was trying very hard to ignore the discomfort because I was at this amazing beach that day:
See why I so successful at to ignoring ear issues? This was an excellent distraction. Oh my, Lanikai is very beautiful! More about that later!
During the night the pain was really bad, and I thought maybe my eardrum ruptured, yikes. The next day I went to a local urgent care. Thankfully there are a lot of those around here with so many tourists. They prescribed drops and told me no swimming for at least 5 days. This was sad news when staying so long in a beach town. I got the prescriptions filled at a local pharmacy. The pharmacist there was very kind and hardworking. She really went the extra mile to figure out my prescription benefits, even when the insurance company was not being very cooperative with her.
In the first photo you can see my very high tech ear protection. I used that at the beach even if I was wading in case of a rogue wave or splash or something. That is what the PA at the urgent care recommended over the standard ear plugs. You may notice my fancy sunglasses in the photo; Helder found them in the ocean! Not even scratched, snazzy.
Drops are almost done and ear feels as good as new, whew! I was not a happy camper during the 5 days or so that my hearing was strange. The hearing issues really affected my mood, and I often felt like it was better not to talk because it took extra effort. My voice is already very quiet and it was hard for me to talk at a good volume with impaired hearing. Folks with hearing loss, I salute you. It is not easy navigating life with a problem invisible to others.