My Ear Case Study

I stayed up half of the night researching the surgery I was having, which only made me more anxious. I concluded that tympanoplasty was the perfect intimidating name for such an intimidating procedure. Essentially, the ear is cut halfway off of the body in order to access the inner ear. From there, whatever remains of the eardrum is cut away, the inner ear is filled with gelatin packing, a new eardrum is grafted on, the outer ear is filled with cotton packing, and finally the ear is stitched back on. The next morning, I woke up feeling weak and exhausted. It was 6:00 am on July 11, 2016; I was due at the hospital in less than an hour.
On the drive there, my mom and I listened to some of my favorite songs, we knew that after the surgery, my …show more content…
The doctor said that he could not see anything but would irrigate my ear just to be safe. Irrigating an ear is just using the water pressure in a fancy spray bottle to push out anything in the ear. The urgent care doctor only used warm tap water in my ear, which was probably the first mistake, and sprayed it quite aggressively on my eardrum, which was the second.
Following that visit, the pain returned and was ten times worse. I did not want to take any more risks, so I scheduled a visit with a local ENT doctor, Dr. Bruggars. He had only looked in my ear for five seconds when he told me that I had a raging fungal infection along with a perforation in my eardrum. For the next nine weeks, I visited Dr. Bruggars at least once a week as we tried everything to tame the fungal infection. However, with each week the perforation in my eardrum grew larger and larger. The infection was dissolving my eardrum.
When one’s eardrum is compromised, the issue of going permanently deaf becomes a threat, as the hearing is already damaged. After the nine weeks of constant visits and different treatments, the infection was subdued enough that I could undergo surgery to repair my eardrum, so that my risk of going deaf would decrease