Let’s Play Doctor

Or shall I say, “’Let’s play,’ Doctor.”? Because that’s what it feels like the doctors around her have been doing with me lately. Here’s the story:
Soon after I got back to Okinawa I went to the hospital because my ear hurt, I couldn’t hear out of it, I had a cough, and my knee hurt. The doctor at Adventist Medical Center said to go to a specialist if my ear didn’t improve after a few days of allergy and antibiotics that he prescribed. It didn’t, so I had Julie come with me to an ears, nose, and throat specialist at a ji bi ka (meaning ears, nose, center). The doctor there looked at me for just a few seconds, before prescribing me four new medicines: Something for my cough, something for the inflammation in the ear, and two others I can’t remember now. I took all the medicine and waited another five days before deciding I needed to go back because I still wasn’t better, that is, my ear still hurt occasionally and I couldn’t hear from it. Last Thursday I went to yet a third doctor. This time Dan came with Jon and I. We went to the same ji bi ka that I went to the previous Monday, but they were closed (all day Thursday) so we called another JET to get info on another clinic. After parking and being lost on foot, we finally arrived. They took my temperature, which was elevated, due to the running around in the heat that we had just done (I think). I filled out their questionnaire (allergies, illnesses, etc) and saw the doctor about 10 minutes later. This visit started the same as it did at the last place, but it didn’t end so abruptly. The doctor took pictures inside my ear canal, pulled some wax from my ear, and gave me two kinds of hearing tests. These were different than any other test I’d done for hearing. One test tested my ear canal/drum hearing, while the other tested hearing at the back of the ear (bypassing the ear drum). One time they tested how much I could hear from one ear while “ignoring” interference noises being piped into the other ear. After waiting a bit longer in the waiting room, his assistants called me for another test, this one to see how much my ear drums moved when they shot a low vibrating sound/pulse into the ear. I waited some more. Then the doc called me back and said that basically my ear drum wasn’t moving in my right ear. He gave me all the pictures he took, all the test results, and explained everything to me. He showed me how the tests differed when I tried to hear using the eardrum on the right, and how evenly matched it was with the left when they bypassed the eardrum. He said that the pressure on the plane created a vacuum in my inner ear so the 3 tiny bones couldn’t vibrate in the ear. He prescribed me 3 kinds of medicine, one that should help dry up the fluid that might be aiding the vacuum, and told me to return in a week. He said he expected it to clear up in anywhere from 4 to 6 weeks and that I couldn’t do anything that might upset the pressure in the ear- no swimming, no flying, nothing. However I did ask if I could fly to Tokyo in September (about a month from when I was in his office) and he said that was fine. But no SCUBA. Bummer. We were planning on going in Tokashiki! Oh well, I want my hearing back.
This doctor was so much more thorough and patient with me. He had so many patients in his office, but I never felt rushed or overlooked- Not like at the other place. I sure hope he was right and that I can hear again soon!