I am so sick of sickness. I have so much I need and want to do and I am exhausted all the time. I am so over it. I’ve only been sinus-infection-free for 4.5 months this year.

My sinus infection seems to have moved into my ears. The left one is especially painful. There’s a lot of pressure in both of them.

On Monday 9/25 I went to my new ENT (ears, nose, throat) doctor—he is actually a nurse practitioner, but I don’t care. He put me on prednisone (five days worth of horse pill size ones and not the graduated pack of small ones), and amoxicillin-clavulanate, which is a hybrid drug. Amoxicillin is the antibiotic and the clavulanate is a potassium compound that is supposed to keep the bacteria from becoming resistant to the antibiotic. I was prescribed ten days worth. Those were horse pills too. In the end, the bacteria in my sinuses just laughed at it.

It seemed to be working for the first few days. Then it started making me feel weird. The sensations did not match up with any of the published side effects. About three days ago I realized my ears were not right: pain and congestion. When I saw the new guy, Wilson, is his name, he said he saw fluid in my right ear.

After taking the medicine for about four days the dizziness subsided. About 3-4 days ago it returned, but not to as severe a degree.

When I paid my co-pay after my visit with the ANRP, I made a follow-up appointment for Monday 10/16. It’s probably a good thing I got a shitty number of hours at work; now, I have plenty of days to try and see him before the 16th. I doubt I can stand this pain for that long.

In the meantime, I have to try and get a replacement CPAP machine. It could actually be the source of all my infections. I am two years beyond being eligible to replace it. American healthcare being the shitty system that it is, replacing it fell through the cracks while I was busy being treated for five things, four of which could have been cancer, and getting into a four car accident that broke my right shoulder and tore my right rotator cuff. Only one of those things turned out to be cancer: squamous cell carcinoma, on my left shoulder.

I’ve had enough on my health status plate. I’m so over this crap.