The ears

I must do something about my ear. I keep thinking the problem is  going away - then this morning I woke up with an awful buzzing and not a lot of hearing in my right ear. In fact I felt awful all morning despite getting a decent night's sleep. I've put off making an appointment with the doctor. I'm not sure what they can do It seems to me the problem is being triggered by sinusitis. There's a problem in the left ear too and I wake up with a stuffy nose - so it may all be the result of indulgence (a meal at Little Chef) last night. It is a lot better than it was in August. There's still a slight buzzing tonight. Maybe I'll give it a couple of days and see how I get on.

Some reassuring news

Sometime ago I promised to talk about the side-effects of montelukast. Mental health problems were not on my mind but nevertheless this report is reassuring:

American Lung Association Study Finds No Evidence of Depression or Suicide Linked to Asthma and Allergy Drug Montelukast

Toothpaste free

And talking of teeth, my original posting on giving up toothpaste back in October 2006 is one of the most visited pages on this blog. People seem to find it on search engines and add their comments, keeping it up to date. Fresh comments added only today!

False alarm

Well I made an appointment with the dentist and cancelled it. The pain in my upper jaw went as fast as it came - and the ear infection has gone equally fast. Who knows what was going on...

In need of wisdom

I am now wondering whether there's a problem with a wisdom tooth in my right jaw. Having cleared the wax from my ear, the hearing is fine - although there's a slight buzz. But there is still sharp pain in the ear and it is worst when I'm tired and trying to go to sleep.

There's also a dull pain at the top of the left jaw. I know my dentist told me I might need wisdom tooth removals at some point. I'm wondering whether that's now.

What could have happened is something like this: mild infection in wisdom tooth causes mild inflammation in ear; trapped wax builds up blocking ear; ear cleared but suffers some superficial damage during process; inflammation from tooth increases.

I've been rinsing the mouth with salted water and that seems to help. These things always happen when you are on holiday - but at least yesterday I gave my whole face a lengthy bath in cold salt water. That seemed to help.

So is it nothing to do with sinusitis? Not necessarily. That could have triggered and aggravated problems as there has also been discomfort in the left ear.

Ear popping

Went out for a meal with friends last night and totally forgot to warn them I had some dietary problems. I thought they knew and it was only when another guest was being assured he would get chops and not casserole I realised I'd been forgotten. A quick trip to the kitchen and an apologetic word with the host and some fish was hastily grilled instead. Bet I don't get many more dinner invitations..

There were some doughballs with garlic. This morning when I got up it felt like I was getting a cold and my right ear was almost glued to the pillow with wax. Thankfully it cleared quickly enough.

Then today I popped into a local fete and, feeling hungry, bought a beefburger. It was nice and meaty and felt free of the additives you get in a take-away. However a little peppery.

By the time I left my ears were popping. It took several days to shake off the deafness in my right ear last week. We discovered we had some ear cleaner, made from purified salt water, in stock and that certainly helped as a syringe. The wax that came out stank horribly.

By Thursday I had my hearing back and thought the problem was pretty well gone. Tonight the ear is really sore although, thankfully, the hearing's still okay.

Hay fever in the ear

Woke up with quite a painful ear-ache today and the loss of most of the hearing in one ear.

It's probably the result of mowing the lawn yesterday. I've done a quick check on "sinusitis" and "ear-ache" just to confirm my hunch. Yes, indeed, it seems allergic reactions are a common cause of ear-ache. Unfortunately swimming may also aggravate it as can wearing mp3 player headphones (while mowing the lawn). So that could spoil my coming summer holidays.

As I explained to someone I was talking to, I've got hay fever in my ear.

Some of my common sense responses seem to be supported - warm water to wash the ear, preferably salted so as to be antiseptic. I've found that doing a kind of deep swallowing also seems to help.

I'm still not sure about taking montelukast daily. After about three days it seems to destabilise me.

So today I'm trying a double dose of anti-histamines, remembering that the specialist told me originally I could take up to three one-a-days at a time. So far the relief is limited.

Side-effects

I was going to write something about the horrific side-effects of montelukast, as described by Wikipedia, but events overtook me.

I never really recovered from that week of living out of a suitcase and in particular from eating my first restaurant pizza in two years. Despite taking montelukast daily, by the middle of last week I was, bizarrely, losing my hearing in one ear and still suffering quite a few other problems. I think it was severe sinusitis, aggravated by lots of midsummer grass and weed cuttings.

Then I got frightened by reading about the side-effects. So for seven days it's been fish, zero-salicylate food and no pills. I'm still not sure I've stabilised but there's less hay fever than before.

I was talking to someone about fish and meat the other day and they were reminiscing about one of the big city markets. According to them, the meat market was loud and aggressive, the fish market much gentler. So does eating fish rather than meat make you calmer, maybe help to sharpen the brain also? I'm not sure.

Here's the Wikipedia article on montelukast.

Salicylate free compost?

My dietician told me that salicylate levels in mushrooms depend on where they are grown. From experience and deduction, I long ago worked out that commercial mushrooms are very bad. I've eaten, large fresh from the field mushrooms and they have been delicious and harmless.

I have on my conscience the large number of banana skins I dispose of. Our local "green waste" collection system will only collect garden waste and I don't want kitchen waste on my compost heap either. And our Prime Minister, rightly if sanctimoniously, urges us to stop wasting food.

So my plan is to get a small sealed compost bin, possibly one of the kitchen waste bins that contain organisms to digest waste, and fill it with low-salicylate waste - banana skins, bits of carrot, rotten fruit, topped up with the occasional spade full of grass from the lawn. Eventually I might even grow mushrooms in this compost.

However I fear a flaw in this plan. I have absolutely no evidence that banana skins are low in salicylate. Salicylate is normally found in outer skins, such as wood bark, and presumably the reason that bananas tend to be okay is that they are the flesh of the fruit, not the skin. How can I find out?

Train the caterers!

Living out of a suitcase this week I've experienced varying treatment at the hands of caterers.

In fact, I've never come across a caterer who understands salicylate hypersensitivity. You are often asked about special dietary requirements - vegetarianism, which is entirely voluntary, they understand, and diabetes of course.

Nor have I ever come across a caterer who has sent a message back asking what to do. What I usually do is write some general advice when asked about "special dietary requirements" - it is usually ignored.

I will say something like "plain food, no sauces or herbs, fish is good as are bananas and chocolate." That will generally allow me to choose my own vegetables. On Monday night I sat down to eat at a conference centre and no provision had been made. As it happens the staff were good and made an effort.

I arrived home last night in a terrible state, even after taking Montelukast daily. The first thing I did was to make myself a zero-salicylate meal with fish, peas and carrots. I wasn't sure whether I could stomach any more fish - but it was okay.

On Wednesday night I had eaten my first commercial pizza for two years. I did so on the grounds that it was a fish pizza. It used just two herbs, organon and caper, along with copious quantities of tomato. I cannot remember all the species of sea-food it involved.

The previous night I had a Chinese. Everybody was eating a shared, set meal but I had a fish fillet with sweet corn separately. It looked disgusting on the plate. The problem with Chinese meals is you do not know what fats are being used to cook and what additives are being used.

So my original point: should we not start lobbying for catering colleges to teach about salicylate hypersensitivity? It does not seem to be that rare and is responsible, for far as I can tell, for a kind of asthma, for nasty skin diseases and a host of other conditions.