Can You Stand It…

…because I don’t know if I can. And I’m not even talking about tomorrow’s election, though I’m not sure I can stand that either. Whatever the outcome, the world will be significantly different on Wednesday than it is today, and I’m not especially upbeat about any of the possible shapes it could take. I don’t know that I’d be able to accept what it would say about this country and the way that power is exercised over it if McCain is somehow elected. But if Obama is elected, I’ll still have grave worries. Not about him, what his election will be a culmination of, or what it will mean to so many; but about the anger that will be sown and left to ferment in dark but significant corners of society (just look at the comments on that last link to get a sense of the fear in the face of this change). Yes, the Republican party would likely disintegrate, which might be amusing to someone more jaded than me, but the fragments that remain will be so much more dangerous, not because of their power, but because their vitriol will be untethered from and thus unmitigated by any participation in mainstream civil discourse. Perhaps the candidate who has been most inspiring for his unerring non-violent, non-aggressive response in the face of constant and focused anger can continue to absorb and reconcile the mass of contradictions sown by his predecessors, but there has to be limit, doesn’t there?

No, what I can’t stand any more of is the the ongoing failure of my ear’s healing to resolve itself one way or another. Either heal or fail to heal, but make up your capricious, feeble mind! The progress of two weeks ago, though not lost, seems to have lost nearly all of it’s momentum. Five weeks ago, having recovered from the most recent fungal infection, the tissue was about seventy-five percent healed. Over the next three weeks, it reached ninety percent healed where, two weeks later, it basically remains. There was a bit more tissue growth, but not at anything like the rate it had grown over the previous three weeks. What to do at this point isn’t clear. What changed over the last two weeks is that I’ve been using Crazy Sam’s Good Time Magic Powder^® less often and my chiropractor, in the course of fixing my back and neck, has moved my jaw around a bit. My inclination was thus to go back to using the powder more often and have the chiropractor not touch my jaw anymore. The ear doctor’s initial recommendation was that we should stop the powder and just let the ear heal. His concern is that continued use of the powder (which includes a steroid, an antibiotic, and an anti-fungal agent) will cause me to develop a resistance. I suggested that leaving the tissue unprotected wouldn’t seem to lead to progress in the healing and would eventually result in an infection that would have to be treated with something. On the other hand, if we use the powder more often for a short time, maybe the momentum we had a few weeks ago will return and the healing will be done soon and I won’t have to put anything, resistance causing or not, in my ear anymore. After some thought he agreed, and suggested that I go back to using the powder daily, and I’ll return next Wednesday to see where we stand.

This leaves me in a very uncomfortable situation. Yet again I have to make these decisions for myself. I have to balance my ear doctor’s experience with the 999,999 out of 1,000,000 cases that he’s seen where everything he’s done has worked against my experience with the 1 out of 1 case that I’ve seen where it hasn’t. Obviously it would be foolish of me to ignore or discount anything that he says, but on the other hand, there have been a few cases where I’ve been right and he hasn’t. Add to that the fact that I also have to coordinate the treatments of different doctors who won’t really work together, but whose efforts will each the other’s, and once again I find myself in the unsought but increasingly common position of being fully responsible for what happens. This is reality, but that doesn’t make me happy about it. I’m left fretting about whether or not tomorrow will the right cross coup de grâce that this evening’s left uppercut has set me up for. And I’ve sought comfort in what I can: Dinosaur Jr.; clonazepam; and, at Emily’s suggestion, puppies. How are you getting through the next couple of days?