continued from part one
The thing about all of this is that my treatment would have worked and was working quite well except for the flying.
The cabin pressurization is a killer.
My contact lens cleaner bottle was mangled by the pressure, just as my poor ears were.
It somehow made me feel better, to see the evidence in a plastic bottle.
I was nearly better (again) when it was time to return home.
On the flight back, the pressurization was worse, because even though my illness was mostly gone, my ears were still sensitive from the first trip a few days before.
I actually thought of extending my trip, to let my ears recover a bit, but it just wasn't in the cards.
I won't repeat the drama of the pain, discomfort and all the million ways I tried to relieve the pressure in my ears, but I did come home unable to hear clearly for days and I woke up the following morning with terrible pain in both of my ears.
Every time I sat up I could hear and painfully feel liquid moving about in my head.
My partner had to go out of town on business which left me in charge of everyone.
I actually forgot to feed my dog one day.
I resumed with the hot teas with honey and tincture, while beginning a regimen of ear treatments.
Onion Poultice has worked for me in the past when one of us has had ear troubles, including water in the ears from swimming or too much wind in the ears from the beach or just a killer head cold.
The treatment is simple:
cut on onion in half
heat the onion by placing the cut side in a skillet, until it is warmed through
cover the cut side with cheesecloth or a thin tea towel
test the temperature so you don't burn yourself or especially not someone you're trying to heal and then
place the cloth covered, hot onion right on your ear and
put on a wool hat that will also cover the onion and lay down until the onion has cooled.
compost the onion
repeat if necessary with the other half of the onion.
This helped some, but it felt like there was too much fluid in my ears for it to work fully.
I had my daughter drop straight usnea tincture into my ears.
Usnea is incredibly drying and in the past I've used it for my black lab's ears.
That worked quite a bit.
I had to go to work and still wasn't fully hearing yet, that was uncomfortable so my daughter, thank goodness, offered to ear candle me.
So sweet, before school.
Ear candles are basically 10-12 inch long muslin tubes coated in wax that you stick in your ear, light the end and as they burn down they create a kind of vacuum effect and the smoke goes in your ear and moisture and wax are drawn up out of your ear and adhere to the cone.
You put the flame out as it gets a few inches from your head and you can open it up and see what it's pulled out of you. It's pretty cool.
Then it was off to work and that was pretty much the end of it all.
It was quite the saga and ended up lasting about 7 days with a few extra days of almost all better.
It was the kind of illness that once past, I couldn't believe how sick I had been.
I feel stronger in my lungs after all the elecampane.
I grew up in a household with multiple indoor smokers, so this has been a weak spot for me.
I don't wish this on anyone and I'm glad it's in the past and even though it's been a few weeks, I wanted to give a peek into the arduous and healing world of herbal medicine.
xo
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