Ears & Throats

Today Jacey and I both had an appointment with an ENT (Ear, Nose & Throat Specialist). Jacey's tonsils are still inflamed and so I made an appointment to get a specialists opinion. He took one look at her tonsils and said, "Wow those are very enlarged and look very angry!" He advised us that we need to have them removed after listening to her breath. He was concerned with sleep apnea. We are waiting on the person from the office that schedules surgeries to give us a call so we can get it all scheduled. The doctor said he is hoping we can do it as outpatient surgery and she will need about one week of recovery time; which includes no school. Surprisingly Jacey was pretty calm about it all. I think we are going to see about this upcoming Monday for the surgery.

I made an appointment for myself as well because of some issues I am having with my right ear. About a year ago I started having a 'whooshing sound' in my right ear so I went to our family doctor and she said it was allergy related. She suspected the tube in my ear had a 'kink' in it due to pressure from my sinus' and as a result there was fluid blocked behind the kink. So I was put on some nosesprays and allergy meds. After about 6 months of this it was still there and getting worse. It had gotton to the point where bedtime was something I dreaded. The whooshing is not as noticeable during the day when there are all sorts of sounds and noises...but at night in the dead silence the whooshing is deafening. I had finally just told myself I was just going to have to deal with it. Well Steven was telling a co-worker and he recommended the doctor we saw today (when I made my appointment I went ahead and scheduled Jacey at the same time).

So today they administered some hearing tests on me and had found that I have about a 50% hearing loss in my right ear. Now this may be due to the whooshing and once the problem is solved it may come back...or it may not. The specific tones I can not hear are lower tones. The specialist looked in my ear and saw what he believes is a vascular tumor behind my ear drum. He then was pushing all over my throat and my jugular vein to see if that made the sounds go away. And believe it or not, when he pushed really hard the whoosing stopped. Long story short, he believes I may have a Glomus Tumor (click the link to read more) which can start in the ear and then make it's way to your jugular vein. Interestingly enough, the thinks this all may be linked with the migraine issues I have been experiencing lately. I have a MRI scheduled for tomorrow at 10am and we will go from there to see what it is the guilty culprit.