Wednesday 25th Jan

I got a phone call Wednesday morning asking me to come to see the consultant that evening. My email had done the trick. I was elated and hopeful that he would sort me out. When I arrived at the hospital I waited less than five minutes before being called in to see him. I love the NHS. Who doesn't? If you live in the UK it's unpatriotic to say anything else. You could get tarred and feathered for breathing a word of criticism against anything our wonderful National Health Service do. The sad truth is, paying gets you a better class of health care. If you can afford private health insurance, do yourself a favour and get some. It could save your life or at least cut the amount of time you spend waiting to see somebody who can help you. My consultant was clearly intelligent, kind and knowledgable about his subject. All things ear. Unfortunately he didn't have great news. In a very nice way he revealed that we don't really know what causes SSHL and that roughly one third recover completely, one third recover some hearing and an unfortunate third learn to live with total deafness. There are a number of theories as to what causes SSHL, the leading contenders 1) a virus, 2) nerve damage and 3) obstructed blood flow are just a few but we don't really know what causes it. He said he could prescribe some drugs to help in the event that I had one or these but there was no real evidence to support this. On the other hand, they wouldn't do any harm. At that moment I would have pissed on a spark plug if I thought it would do any good so I said "yes please" One possible cause of nerve damage or restricted blood flow could be a tumour so he advised I should have some blood tests and a MRI scan too. Purely as a precaution. I agreed. Angie and I drove around Oxford at night looking for a pharmacy that was open and had all three drugs in stock. They were, steroids, an anti-viral and something called Serc. Things were looking pretty bad. I had another night of kettles and waves crashing on the shore in my left ear.