Stuffy Ears and Fears of Allergies

Gray's Anatomy plate - Wikipedia.org

For several weeks now I have been experiencing uncomfortable swelling inside my right ear canal. Just my right ear. Just near the earlobe – shallow enough to touch with my pinkie. I put up with it for days before I realized it was following any sort of pattern.

I always felt it in the evening: after dinner and/or nebs, because sometime it waited until we were watching TV and sometimes it was nearly during dinner. Then I’d get it after lunch or mid-morning. The real tipping point for me was when it happened doing my nebs in the morning before I’d eaten or had anything to drink.

I mentioned it on Facebook and everyone suggested I see my doctor. We mulled over options here and decided to cut out Hot Pockets – my most recent high-calorie food addiction – what is “imitation mozzarella” anyway? That didn’t do anything but make my lunches take 5x longer to heat up. Same symptoms. It didn’t make sense to be an allergy to my food anyway. Who’s ever had a one-sided allergy in their ear from ingestion?

Friday morning I’d had enough

I called my PCP to see if he had changed his hours and was open on Fridays. He was and he could see me in an hour. I downed my breakfast and hit the road.

As far as family practice doctors go, he’s fantastic. What he doesn’t know about CF he more than makes up with general weird things like in-grown hairs (I hold his whisker length record), staph infections on hamstrings, plantar warts, and the effects of not having a daily Dulcolax regimen with CF that we won’t go into detail enough to even name it here… unless someone could benefit from it, of course. So I thought I’d give this strange symptom a go with him.

He listened to my above story and had me up on the table. He looked in both ears with the hand-held scope and noted some fluid behind my right eardrum, but seemed to think that was sinus-related and something to talk to my ENT about in 2 weeks. Then he nailed it on the head.

He stuck his fingers in my ears and asked me to open my mouth. No problem. “Close it.” OUCH! Same for going side to side and biting down. He said I have TMJ – temporomandibular joint disorder. Some of you may remember me saying I couldn’t open my jaw a few weeks ago without severe pain. That lasted about 8 hours or so that day.

So, I looked it up when I got to the car and found:

Ear pain associated with the swelling of proximal tissue is a symptom of temporomandibular joint disorder.

Sounds familiar, as did 7 other symptoms on that Wikipedia list, including clicking at times when I open wide.

Here’s what’s going on

I’ve always been a teeth grinder at night, but sleeping with a mouthguard, CPAP, and coughing in my sleep do not mix. I think I wore it two nights, and that’s before my CPAP. I got a chinstrap a while back, but it’s too claustrophobic. I had to take it off to even consider laying down, let alone going to sleep. But that’s not all.

I’ve, over the course of a few months, noticed that I am sitting with my jaw clenched. A lot. Coding, designing, listening, writing (yes, even now), and driving.  It’s become a facial posture of sorts. Why, I have no clue, but it’s clearly causing health issues.

He prescribed Flexeril 10mg at bedtime and told me to take 1/2 a dose for a while to see if that helps. It’s a strong muscle-relaxant in an effort to loosen my jaw at night to get some relief during the day. Clinic wasn’t concerned about respiration because I have my CPAP for assistance if I get lazy in my sleep.

I’ve been on it without any improvement, but tonight is pretty much a wash. I guess I’ll be sleeping in. I’ve programmed until I was so stuck so late that even my night owl programming buddy had gone to bed.

I’ll have an update to this in a week or so. Until then, is this common? How did you or yours get over the symptoms?

Tagged as: TMJ

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