un-be-freaking-lievable

So I woke up the day before yesterday with... dum dum dum... another blasted ear infection! That's THREE of these freaking things in as many months! Before the first one in September, I couldn't honestly tell you the last time I had an honest-to-god ear infection. Now I'm having them recurrently?! Yes, I'm slightly annoyed. I decided to go see my ENT to get the bottom of things instead of just goint to my GP to get treatment. My ENT is awesome. (And HOT to boot. [snicker]) He checked out my ear and, yes, it's infected. As it turns out, the skin of my ear canal is severely irritated (possibly eczcema) which makes it prone to itching which, in turn, makes me jab my finger in it to stop said itching, which further irritates the canal which leads to further itching and further jabbing which then leads to pain and an infection. Mystery solved! So I have yet another course of antibiotic drops and a hefty supply of Lortab at my disposal. Joy above all joys! The Monkey went with me to the appointment because his hearing has been cloudy on the one side. My ENT looked in his ears as a courtesy (only charged us for one office visit, how nice, huh?) and said that The Monkey has a "typical toddler ear infection" (otitis media) which is different from what I have (swimmer's ear/otitis externa). So my doc gave The Monkey a week's worth of antibiotics (hooray for free samples!) and me a week's worth of ear drops (again, hooray for free samples!). Prescriptions included, the visit cost us $63.00.

After a couple months of waiting patiently, I finally heard something from the SSA on my disability. Because I haven't been to my pdoc in over six weeks, they are requiring that I have a medical examination done. This includes both a physical exam and a psych eval. My physical is on the 9th and my psych eval is on the 15th. I have an appointment with my new therapist tomorrow and then I finally get to see the new pdoc about meds on the 18th. Hopefully everything works out in my favor. The Monkey and I are already pinching pennies and slowly but surely draining our savings account. :-/ Hopefully he'll be employed soon, too.

So it goes...