On the way back from vacation my mild summer cold turned into ETD. Eustachian tube dysfunction.

What is ETD? It's basically where fluid behind the eardrums gets locked in there usually due to swelling or some other blockage. The net result is that your ear is plugged and it's very annoying. It's like having water in your ears but not having a way to get it out.

I've now had it for 5 days and it's driving me crazy.  On Friday, I'd finally had enough. We called the doctor's office and I got in an hour later (those of you living in countries with socialized medicine eat your hearts out <g>).  Sure enought, ETD. 

So what can you do to treat it? Unfortunatley, not much.

The doctor suggested I continue to take decongestants (like Sudafed) and try to sleep on my other ear.  He also prescribed a steroid nasal spray that may help over the next few days to bring down the swelling.  The spray is essentially the same thing as an Asthma solution which tells me that they don't have a very good solution for this kind of problem yet.

If worse comes to worst, they can put a small hole in your ear drum to equalize the pressure and let it drain but that would be a very last resort since it is a surgery (getting tubes put in ones ears which I have had before when I was very young).

The problem is that I've been told that this kind of problem can last for weeks if not months. That's certainly not acceptable since I can't fly while this is occurring.