The third week of classes is almost over. Most of my students are going to be okay. A couple are not. A few are awesome.
In addition to the usual course load, I’m working with two of my former comedy students to produce half hour “goodbye” sets (they’re graduating): something I used to do before the pandemic. It’s a lot of work, but I’ve known these kids for years, and I want to give them a proper sendoff.
Anubis just got his stitches out, after yet another bladder surgery. An unfortunate bout of diarrhea means we need to rent a carpet cleaner soon.
I saw John Mulaney at the Golden One Center. I love him, but I don’t ever want to see comedy in a venue like that again. It’s too big. And I was seated in the front row balcony–a really narrow space. Every time someone had to pee, I worried one of us was going to fall over to our deaths. Is there a little bit of plastic to protect your drink from falling? Yes. Protection from YOU falling? Nope.
After almost four month, I was finally able to re-start my allergy treatment, at a different clinic. Because it’s been so long, they had to take my dose way down, and I have to go in every week now. On top of that, I still go to my regular UCD place to get my Xolair shots twice a month.
In other words, I used to have two shot appointments a month. Now, because UCD can’t seem to find an allergist, I have six. That sucks.
I got to see the National Theatre Live production of The Book of Dust, at the Tower Theater. They did a really beautiful job with it. It was the first time my friend and former Oxford assistant and I had seen each other in a long time.
I have discovered there’s a technical term for another way in which my body is weird.
I saw my ENT last week, because ever since Covid, or whatever I had at the very end of 2019, my right ear has been off: feeling stopped up, with low level pain. My ears have never been great: any change in elevation, even going to the foothills, is painful. It also makes me look awful: my eyes start to water uncontrollably.
In his exam, my ENT asked me to pop my ears.
I explained I couldn’t do that. He assured me I could. So I plugged my nose and blew.
“Oh, wow. You actually can’t. Nothing in your ear moved at all.”
He used a complex scientific term for what I was supposed to be able to do, one I can’t remember now and which isn’t coming up when I search for it.
I honestly hadn’t realized that everyone else could just pop their ears at will; I just thought my painful ears were part of everything hurting when it shouldn’t.
The good news: there’s apparently a treatment we can try, after we run a few hearing tests. As much as I travel, I hope it helps.
Finally, the Dean said a couple of week ago that if I only had 11 students for Dublin in the Fall, we couldn’t go. I did one last push. And it paid off. My 12th student has enrolled, so Dublin, here we come!
Perhaps the scientific term that the ENT used is the Valsalva maneuver? Grain of salt; I’m no expert here. I think I learned the term from a cartoon on Adult Swim.
I found out: it’s that I can’t self-insufflate.
It’s lovely to learn new words while reading things like someone’s blog. I didn’t know the word “insufflate” and needed to look it up. For me it’s way less fun to learn new words from a medical provider while I’m having some kind of bodily malfunction (this is how I learned what Meniere’s Disease is!). It must have been frustrating to learn something is fundamentally less functional than you’d suspected. More grains of salt since I’m still medically ignorant here but it sounds like that potential treatment option might involve messing with your Eustachian tubes. Whatever it is I hope it offers some relief!