Life always seems to come at your from the side. Sometimes it can knock you off your feet, leaving you wobbly and off balance.
This happened to me – literally.
It started with a simple checkup. I made an off-hand comment about my hearing. My wife was getting tired of repeating things to me. I was getting tired of the ringing in my left ear. To me it was nothing worth getting spun up about. It was the ear that an errant firecracker exploded beside when I was a stupid teen. Nothing that a hearing aid would take care of.
My provider looked at me, and as she checked my reflexes and fired off a few questions.
”How’s your balance? Have you been getting dizzy? How much hearing have you lost over the past few months?”
Sure, my balance had declined some over the past few months, but I’m over 50. Also, my hearing seems to have gotten a lot worse on my left side, but again, I’m no young dude.
She noted my reflexes were a little slower on my left side, and thought it might be to a good idea to get a balance and hearing workup from an otololarynologist. The nurse would set this up for me.
An otowhat…?
Otololarynologist – a doctor that treats issues with the nose, ears and throat.
A few weeks later I was enduring a series of hearing and balance tests. After a few hours I was in an exam chair trying to keep still as an otologist (a specialist in balance and hearing disorders) reviewed my results and probed my ear.
Technically she was a neurotologist – an ear, nose and throat doctor that is also a surgeon that specializes in issues in the lower skull base as well. A neurotologist that seemed to be furrowing her brow as she examined me.
That got my attention. Especially, when she kept going “Hmmmm” as she poked and prodded my face with a wood probe. I was asked to stand in place with my eyes closed.
She commented that my balance seemed to pitch to my left, and that I had some numbness around the left side of my mouth.
As she looked over my test results I heard her “hmmm” under her breath.
”I want to schedule an MRI in the next few weeks.” “It’s probably nothing, but I want to see what’s going on in your ear. I need to run out the very outside chance this is a Vestibular Schwanomma.”
A what?
”A tumor of the covering of your auditory nerve. They’re pretty rare, so I wouldn’t get too worried about it. Just want to check it off the list.”
Of course, I ALWAYS worry when someone says I “shouldn’t get too worried” about something. Since there was an MRI backlog, there wouldn’t be an an opening for weeks. Add in some issues my Mom was having with her own health, and I was forced to push out my MRI appointment to late March of 2020.
Then I found out that my Mom was suffering from Parkinson’s. Add in insurance issues, the COVID shutdown and my reluctance to actually go through with an MRI (I’m extremely claustrophobic), and this “simple” MRI didn’t happen until late April.
April 23, 2020 to be precise. It was a day that would put me on a path that I never predicted I would travel. It was the day all of the “What Ifs” coalesced into a definitive “What Is!”
It was the day I will it all got real!
