aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Saturday, February 24, 2007

One Year Ago: the onset of my Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss

On this day last year, in a post entitled ”Uh Oh,” I wrote:

I woke up this morning with complete deafness in one ear. This is the “I’m feeling lucky” Google hit. That’s lucky?

LATER: Better hit, the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, “Some patients recover completely without medical intervention.”

Of course, they do say, “It should be considered a medical emergency.” Have you ever tried to get a doctor in rural Georgia on a Saturday? 

LATER STILL: Option 1) drive an hour each way to wait 2 to 5 hours ("best guess") to see a random doctor with no particular expertise at an “Urgent Care” facility. Option 2) wait until Monday.

My doctor and Doug’s doctor’s advice, wait until Monday. Expect a smattering of future posts grumbling about health care in America…

One year later I’m still totally deaf in my right ear. I’m now completely adjusted to that reality. Some conclusions:

• - My expectations that I’d be grumbling about the American medical establishment were spot on. I’ve been through a year’s worth of tests paid for by my insurance company, many that I now believe were unnecessary. Most recently I drove four hours round trip to a research hospital in Augusta for a ten minute chat in which the doctor tried to persuade me that a titanium screw in my skull was a good idea. It’s not. He told me to come back in a year. I might.
• - My own doctor, one of the two that told me to wait until Monday (I later learned that one should, in such a situation, seek emergency care immediately), has still not seen me. I see her, on the other hand, in television commercials for some expensive franchise weight loss gimmick program. She looks much better than when last I saw her, apparently the beneficiary of another franchise money-maker, non-surgical laser face-lifts offered through her office. You can’t get an appointment for a physical, but if you need an eye job you’re in and out in a jiffy.
• - Doctors have embraced the Internet. When I would ask the doctors - GP, ENT, neurologist - if there was something they would recommend I read, to a person they answered, “Do a Google search.” Somehow that didn’t sit well with me. Then again, rereading today that very first I’m feeling lucky Google find, it was about as good as anything I’ve read since.