Familiar Pain

As I fight this crazy possession of mold, the familiar mouth pain has come back. Not as bad as it was, but more or less letting me subtly know is back. I woke up this morning late, I did manage to sleep all night, but usually I should be up by 6:30. My body had other plans. Aggie got me up by 7:30.

As I sat up, as I do every morning, I take inventory of myself. What’s changed from yesterday? Is anything better, is anything the same, a regretted, is anything worse. The space between my eyes still feels ok, no more pulsing sensation. The crawling feeling seems to have calmed down for the most part. But under my tongue, and along my jawline and cheeks, at the merest touch of my tongue, I was extremely sensitive. In the left part of my cheek and jaw, I can feel this raised pathway that starts where I feel the few cysts that sit behind my left jaw bone, right in front of my ear. That entire area just feels lumpy

This is where I’ve always had this problem. This is where the cysts were removed in 2018. I’m pretty sure when they were removed, they didn’t get it all. These feel really deep. But from there, it goes inside my mouth and runs along the bottom of my jaw. It feels extremely inflamed if I had to wrap a medical term around it. It doesn’t feel nice whatsoever. I’m t that point of trying to determine if it’s getting better, or if it’s just continuing to spread. I do have to keep paying attention to this on a daily basis.

Outside of what I m taking now, I don’t know what else to add, or try.

Last night I did a sinus rinse, but it felt different than the last time. I didn’t get much out, I was hoping something would. But it didn’t. Typically I spend about 10 minutes total, the longest part being making sure I empty out all of the saline from my face. Whether it’s getting on the floor, and using gravity to help it out, or lightly blowing each side of my face out. Or just blowing as hard as I can.

After the rinse, I sat on the couch, and that’s when I noticed that typically after a rinse, I feel somewhat relieved, but this time my face hurt. My left ear especially started to hurt again. And from the back of my throat just felt extremely irritated. As I felt around the back of my ear, and my ear lobe, I could feel the usual pus. As frustrating as this is, and as much as I shouldn’t, I started to slowly work it out.

It’s the same shit I usually get out, yellowish, slimy, pus. As I kept pushing and moving it around, I finally found the right spot, and just started squeezing. That’s when it really started to come out. It didn’t feel like much at first, but Jesus, once I got it started, it just would keep coming out. As I finished emptying what I could, I started to feel around the Mastoidectomy incision site, and I could feel more buildup underneath the old incision.

I got back up, and went back to the bathroom, to position the mirrors so that I could get a clear view. And from what I could tell, not only does the incision have small pustules pushing through. As I kept looking, I started to notice these raised areas behind my ear and on the top. This has to be the infection starting to surface. I did try to motivate it to come out, I definitely feel it underneath though.

So maybe next Friday when the stitches come out from the biopsy Schleve did, I can maybe turn his attention to those areas, and see if he can’t get it out. The hard part is it’s so scattered throughout my ear, and scalp, I don’t know where to start or begin.

All I know is that this has really worn out its welcome. Daily I do the same thing, I wake up the next morning, and I feel the aftermath of me trying to just get rid of this.

When I got out of bed, I went to the bathroom for the usual morning dilaudid, and did the usual look at myself in the mirror. I immediately noticed, that on the rear part of my cheekbone, there was yet another raised bump that felt like the same thing in the back of my ear, and that’s when I felt the pain when I tried moving it or touching it.

So maybe this is the infection starting to rear its ugly head. Since it’s been hiding so deep, now it’s making its way out. I’m pretty sure the regimen change I made will take time to tell if it’s working or improving anything. But I’d just love to be at that point where I’m not dealing with this anymore.

Throughout the day the nausea kind of came and went as it wanted. My face was just burning. I can still feel the inflammation in my mouth, and I’m really at that point of is this something that Hepworth will ultimately have to address. Yeah, he was supposed to do the debridement of my face, which I still don’t have an answer as to why he elected to not do it.

Another thing that I’ve noticed, is that I now have a productive cough again. My lungs feel full of crud. I’m pretty sure this shit has to just made a home everywhere. It’s just a matter of time, and patience to see if this antifungal helps push it out from everywhere.

I’m not there yet. With all of the things I’m still experiencing, it’s probably going to be at least 3-6 months of still dealing with recovery. I just yearn for the day I wake up, and I don’t have to keep doing this stupid routine.