hope
It began with a crackle, the faint industry of a chick's tiny beak forging the first ragged fissure in its once flawless shell.
It began with a crackle, the gentle crepitations of desiccated leaves unwittingly crushed beneath October's playful boots.
Yes, it began with a crackle, a muted glow, a beacon--nebulous as a lighthouse on a distant foggy shore.
Typically, I commit my posts to celebrations of happiness, not because there are no hardships in our lives, but because these are the moments that make life worth living, the myriad joys of human existence. These are the gifts I choose to embrace, remember, and, with a borderline obsessive zeal, frequently photograph, then chronicle at length. Everything else is merely a speed bump on the road to personal fulfillment. This summer has been the Lombard Street of speed bumps. At times the steep grade and sudden switchbacks have jarred the rose-colored glasses clean off my face.
I regret to say this ordeal has seen those sunny spectacles restored and shaken loose again at alarmingly regular intervals. Then there was a crackle.
The drama commenced just after Memorial Day, sending our family into a whirlwind of perpetual labor and our home into a state of cluttered chaos. Though the heaviest workload has waned, the contents of one room have been dispersed throughout the house, leaving us with living conditions three stacks shy of a Hoarders episode, a level of discomfort we must endure for at least a few weeks more. For the purpose of this story, the whys and the wherefores (one of the more repetitive--yet fun to say--phrases in the English vernacular) are unimportant, so I shall not rehash that saga here. This particular tale centers only around one innocuous product and its catastrophic consequences.
The instigator in question is a simple household spray--plant-based, nontoxic, harmless to use around babies and animals, safe, in fact, to use on animals, though that is not something I would have ever risked. What more assurance could a concerned and doting dog mom ask for? Everything about this all-natural solution boasted its practically unrivaled safety, the very antithesis of its synthesized chemical alternatives. It is even proudly manufactured in the USA, which used to suggest consistent quality control and reputable ingredient sourcing. Whether that was ever true or simply a mass-marketed delusion, I couldn't possibly attest.
We used this paragon of purity only once, in a small area, in only one modest room at the back of the house. There were no printed warnings of what was to come, what could occur, even if only in the rarest instances. After all, if you haven't yet heard, it's completely safe...that unique brand of "safe" that has resulted in two months of constant physical pain, pain and inflammation that has deafened me in one ear, robbed me of real productivity, and poisoned our entire home. As this single, light application concluded in the early days of June, I felt the ache of a dull pressure deep within my left ear. I thought it odd, but I shook it off as a fluke that would vanish once I'd left the room and the spray had dried. Instead, with every passing day the pain worsened from the absorbed and airborne irritants, becoming sharper and more intense the closer I got to the treated space. Eventually my head felt like it was half full of concrete, regardless of where I was in the house. It still does, and this feeling is as good as it ever gets. When higher concentrations hit me, that dull heaviness explodes into piercing agony, like having my skull simultaneously impaled with a railroad spike while being punched in the jaw. A few weeks ago, we realized keeping the door closed wasn't enough. We sealed it around all the edges, but, by then, it was too late. The vapors had long since escaped into the rest of the house, invisible toxins everywhere wreaking havoc in my head.
Eustachian tube dysfunction is the term for my condition. It doesn't sound that bad--a dysfunction, like a door that you have to wiggle because it sticks a little or a toaster you have to push down twice if golden perfection is your goal. ETD, in my case, has resulted in a completely blocked connection between the middle ear and the back of the nose, trapping air, creating negative pressure, and drawing the eardrum inward. According to some medical sources, it can remedy itself in a matter of days, causing nothing more than mild pain and muffled hearing, if you're lucky. But when the essential oil molecules that caused the ETD remain present 24/7, the inflammation continues to increase. Over a two-month period, that constant exposure has exacerbated the pain to new and unimaginable heights. At this point, the word dysfunction does not do it justice. The moniker disguises the reality as a pesky gnat, rather than the ravenous, merciless shark it actually is.
For weeks, I treated the symptoms, believing the problem would go away with patience and diligence. Though the heaviness never subsides, I have achieved pockets of relief from the more debilitating flare-ups, though such welcome respites do not last long. Still, I soothe the agony via OTCs and Dennie's carefully prepared warm compresses. My invisible foe, however, became more and more pervasive. By July, it wasn't just the treated room I had to avoid; I could no longer enter the kitchen or bathroom without an N95 mask. We replaced our old air purifier with a small unit capable of drawing volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, out of the air. Sealing the room once more, with the machine running inside, we did a 96-hour scrub, changed the filter, and did it all again for another week. It didn't work. I'm sure it achieved something, but it wasn't enough, and, by day three, with no changes in my health, we knew a tabletop unit wouldn't be up to the task no matter how long we ran it. After extensive research and two fact-finding phone calls, we sought out the best in the industry, a purifier with the most powerful, 29-pound activated super-gas carbon filter. If that sounds like industrial-scrubber quality, it is, and, from what we've learned, nothing less was going to make our home habitable for me again.
We are now more than forty-five hours into a whole-house scrub on the machine's highest setting. Forty-eight should suffice, according to what we've been told. At lower settings, this über-powerful unit barely whispers across the room, and soon we will be able to significantly soften the ambient noise level. At the current setting, it is so loud, we cannot sleep. We can barely think, but ultimately it will be well worth the disturbances and fatigue, worth the unexpected expense and week-long wait to acquire. The door to the treated room is open for the first time in months, though my once prized and beautiful writing space flaunts the desolate vibe of a hastily abandoned colony. (On that fateful August day of 1590, did the settlers of Roanoke, perchance, also fall prey to an allegedly nontoxic spray? Maybe I've stumbled upon the answer to a centuries-old mystery. Then again, perhaps not.) Saturday, I had to remain masked as the trapped vapors flooded from the doorway. Even with my nose and mouth covered, the escaping toxins delivered an unprecedented level of torment. Two days later, my condition still causes immense pain, but it no longer intensifies specifically when I am near the source. The esteemed superhero of air purifiers, as promised, has vanquished the villain. The ETD, on the other hand, lingers like a musty smell in a damp basement.
It stands to reason that two months of inflammation will take a while to normalize, more hours, more days, more patience than required for the thorough scrubbing of our home's air. One day, my hearing may be restored, or it may not. The pain may finally subside, or it may not. How much less stressful the ETD would be to bear if I knew for certain that spending most of my time managing these awful symptoms would one day be nothing more than a bad memory. Alas, only time will tell. Every day I wait, I administer the necessary palliatives over and over again, and I long for another crackle. Thanks to this spray, the presence of certain odors, chemicals, exhaust, VOCs, even select sounds and changes in air pressure, now violently assault one hypersensitive ear with neither fair warning nor an ounce of clemency. Safe and nontoxic, it seems, aren't all they're cracked up to be.
But far be it for me to share with you a story that ends on such a discordant note. This happily-ever-after novelist categorically cannot abide it. The greatest wonders, I often say, are usually found in the smallest moments. This is where true happiness resides. This is where my rose-tinted lenses had so faithfully guided me before our unsavory summer of speed bumps. And, even during a prolonged period of coinciding calamities, there have been moments of laughter, moments of triumph, and a long awaited moment of something more.
It was Sunday morning, approximately nineteen-and-a-half hours into our whole-house air scrub. Perspiration trickled from my forehead. In the course of one day and night, our dwelling had practically channeled the Sahara. To boost the efficiency of the Airpura S700 Deluxe, we'd had to turn off and uninstall the portable air conditioner so that the window through which it vented could be closed for these first forty-eight hours. There would be no chance of relief for me until the toxins were cleared. At this stage, efficiency matters more than our present lack of comfort. To refresh and rehydrate, I sipped at the water I always keep nearby, and, upon swallowing, that's when I felt it. Like a hushed murmur with strangely sharp edges, it announced the first hint that something had changed, a minuscule snap of air escaping my blocked Eustachian tube. I still cannot hear on that side. The pain persists. My ear has not yet popped, nor has the pressure begun to noticeably equalize. But, after two brutal months, that initial sensation delivered tears of joy, and it all began with a crackle, a muted glow, a beacon--nebulous as a lighthouse on a distant foggy shore. A crackle, they say--they being the otoscope-wielding-white-coat sorts--is the harbinger of healing. As for the girl with the head half full of concrete, the ongoing agony makes the word healing feel a tad premature, but maybe we'll call that crackle by another name altogether.
I quite like the sound of...hope.