Take my ears, please!

Welcome to my pity party:

I have an inner ear disorder, Meniere's disease. It gives me my own personal symphony in my ears: I have a steel pipe being dragged through a distant alley in my right ear. My left ear has been playing the persistent hum of fluorescent lights for about 6 years, but for the past four weeks, it has also been entertaining me with the constant buzz of single engine planes, complete with Doppler effect. I got used to the pipes and the fluorescent hum, but the planes are getting to me.
Meniere's also causes vertigo. I don't tend to spin, though. I rock, or else I just feel off balance and motion sick. Mild vertigo wages a constant assault on several areas of my brain. It causes irritability and fatigue. It also causes something termed the channel effect. It's the tendency of vestibular disturbances to reduce the amount of information a person can correctly process at a time. I can usually keep dozens of tasks on schedule, managing my education, my family schedule, housekeeping, and bookkeeping, and still pay attention to the lively and fascinating chatter of my brilliant and verbose family. When Meniere's is active, though, I make stupid mistakes all the time. How am I going to make a 4.0 in Anatomy and Physiology this quarter if Meniere's is back to stay? I'm stubborn, though. For now, I am saying I will just have to work harder and be more careful.
Meniere's also causes hearing loss. I have been deaf to conversation in my left ear for about 6 years. My doctor has assured me that the disease is only in my left ear. I have known he was wrong for about 5 years, but only yesterday got the proof: I have lost 20 decibels at 500 hertz in my right ear. Now, in addition to the tinnitus and pressure I've had in both ears all along, and the rocking vertigo which argues that both ears are sending conflicting misinformation, I have documented low range hearing loss in both ears. I have a future of deafness to look forward to. Hopefully I won't have significant loss in my right ear for another 20 years. That is how long it took my left ear to get that bad. You never know, though. I guess I should listen to lots of music while I can.

I'm done moaning for now. I had to do this because it has been knocking around in my head, making me anxious and unhappy for almost a month now, and I thought I could yack it out on my blog and move the fuck on. Wish I could really unload it that easily, but there ain't no goddamn cure.