Middle Ear Infection Sucks

I swear that I'm not that moody a person, and that each time I choose to update this by writing an article or two, it's only because I have something nasty to get out of my mind so that it can recover. Oh, and I swear that being half-deaf is the most annoying thing that one can feel.

And why is it that I'm now half-deaf? All thanks to the middle ear infection that I have had to deal with over the last week or so. It is pretty annoying, to say the least, having to deal with an infection that is invisible yet always makes its presence known through the general bunged-upness of the ear. And in my ``good'' ear too---there is no justice in the world, it seems. Anyway, yes, I've been dealing with the infection over the last week, drifting in and out of consciousness from the higher fevers that I had to deal with, and dealing with the ridiculous amount of foul-smelling and foul-tasting phlegm and mucus, the latter of which I learnt only a few days ago when I started to feel a bit better and found that my taste buds were no longer numbed up.

Damn thing was a sickly green goo that tasted most foul. Could have sworn it was the pus from the middle ear that was forcefully drained by me via the Eustachian tube---it was in a ridiculous amount of quantity too. Very vile experience that I hope never to repeat.

Well today is almost a week after I first started on the course of antibiotics, and I feel mostly fine. The fever had broke a couple of days back, the cough is much reduced, and the ridiculously foul-smelling/tasting discharge is also reduced. But there is still this damn tinnitus in my ear that is driving me crazy and that whole bunged up feeling still hasn't gone away completely.

A worthy question to ask is why do I even have this lousy infection in the first place? There is only one answer to this: a weakened constitution due to stress.

Stress. Stress is the cause of my downfall.

Sometimes I hate myself, hate myself for being so... strongly work-minded. Always thinking about how to do more in a better/efficient/cost-saving manner. Always pushing myself more and more, convincing myself that there is always work to be done, and that I should be a conscientious worker who is mindful of his overall productivity. And that's why I even returned to work on some projects even when I was on leave the last time, simply because they were not worked on often enough due to the sorry fact that I've been committed almost 140% of my work week's time.

And thanks to that, I fell ill. Twice. It's just that this time, it's a fairly serious one that will probably have long-term ramifications that I need to take care of.

Thankfully, this week I am on leave. Final-fucking-ly, I might add, though it probably came about two weeks too late---had I taken a break two weeks earlier, I'd probably not be so stressed to the point that an infection would break out and take me out for a week. But we all have perfect hindsight, and this is no exception.

One thing's for certain though, I'm not going to give a rat's ass about work for this whole week I'm on leave. I think I deserve at least this privilege considering everything that is said and done. Time to make sure that the ``leave'' I take is put to good use in recharging my batteries so that I don't go down like a house of cards in a gale. Everyone will thank me for that, I'm sure.