New Career Plan

I'm fairly certain that after yesterday's flight, it's time to find a new career.  My ears have to be permanently damaged.

The following is a boring read and TMI for most.  But some day I will read this again and recall the misery.  Feel free to skip...

I've always prided myself in my easy ability to clear my ears. My dive buddies are always astonished at how I can drop like a rock to 60 feet below while it can take some of them ten minutes just to clear their ears.  I've never really had problems flying either.  (Story time: On my families first trip to Hawaii, I was five and my brother hadn't quite turned three.  His ears were hurting, and he asked my mom for a band-aid. We have laughed over that for many years now.  And look at him now...a pilot)

For the last few days, I have been rather miserable with a sinus infection. It ruined diving in Chuuk, and continues to ruin things. Grrrrr.

(Side note: I do admit God gave me supernatural strength to do what I needed to do each day and then immediately crash into misery until I had to do it all over again.  Each night I would think, "there's no way"...then somehow I would push through.)

I dreaded the flight.  I flew once before with a bad sinus infection, in a Cessna 172 (aka little plane), and my brother was the pilot. Therefore, he could control the descent/ascent as I cleared my ears and then we could climb/fall a bit more.  Well, the nerve of yesterday's pilots.  None of them took any consideration to my ears back in seat 8C. How rude!

Unfortunately, from Pohnpei to Guam, there are two take-offs and two landings involved. DOUBLE TORTURE. I'm pretty sure I screamed once when my ear popped.  I also know that I moaned all the way down on the final descent. (Thankfully, the roar of the plane is loud enough that I don't think anyone heard me moaning.)  After landing in Guam, my right side never cleared. I was pretty much deaf.

Some time in the night, the side cleared...mostly.  Today I feel a billion times better, except that I can't breath and I blow my nose constantly.  But my right ear has yet to go back to normal.

Since working ears are a must in the band world (or at least the successful band world), I shall now start making my plans for a new career.  Maybe I'll be a veterinarian.

(PS. Perry wants everyone to know the reason he is not listed in any of this is that he was forced to ride in the bottom of the plane with the cargo. He's not very happy about things right now.)