Anyone has experienced very small CF leak?

[bpham]

I had AN surgery on my left ear about 1.5 years ago (Translab).

I've been diagnosed with ear infection by 3 doctors (family doctor, ENT, my surgeon at HEI), all three have told me I have ear infection.  I have been taking 5 different antibiotics, none has fixed the issue.  Even thought I have fluid in the AN ear, but no inflammation nor pain.  The more I researched, the more I think i might have a very small CF leak, even though I have not seen any leak coming from my nose or ear, but may be because it is very small leak.

My symptoms are some slight headache, ear fullness, very bad tinnitus (the kind that I experienced before I had the AN removal), dizziness, some stiffness in the neck.  Also when I sleep at night, there is some pressure on the back of the head, and also, the head on that side is very sensitive to the touch.

Let me know if you had experienced similar experiences:  Your symptoms, how it was found out and how it was treated?

Thanks.

[Migoi]

Have you suggested this possibility to any or all of your doctors? While I wouldn't necessarily expect the family doctor to pick up on that line of inquiry, I would think the ENT and the HEI surgeon would.

Suggesting possible diagnosis to a doctor is always tricky. It's easy to couch it in such a way as to make them feel they are being accused of not knowing what they are doing. What has worked for me in the past when I had these types of questions was to preface the question with statements about knowing I spend too much time on the internet and that I'm paranoid about certain body parts...like my head. I would probably do it something like this... "Doc, this ear infection seems very stubborn. You know how paranoid I am about my head and I've been doing google searches. There are probably really good reasons for not thinking this is a smal CF leak but I can't find them in my searches.... can you ease my mind to let me sleep better at night and tell me why we know this isn't one? Thanks..." I think of it as my Columbo method of asking questions.

Sorry I couldn't be more help... I hope it works out for you and the problem gets solved..

..take care.. tim b

[bpham]

Tim,

Great suggestion.  I'll try that the next time I see him.  However, at this point, I'm gonna have to put up with this and hope that it will go away.  This issue has been going on for the last 6 weeks and sometimes I feel ok, sometimes not.  I don't know that the doctor from HEI will do the next time I see him.  My ENT told me that next week (2 weeks after I saw him last), if the fluid is still there, he'll extract it out.  I probably wont want him to do that since this ear is not a normal ear already with the surgery and fat stuffs in there.  I think I read it somewhere that in our cases, we dont want to have a hole in the ear drum that can facilitate more infection due to exposure to the outside.  As I'm writing, I was stupid to strain myself yesterday doing some tire changing and I could feel some pain inside that ear and after that I've felt some kind of fluid going in there again which seemed to stop in the last few days...stupid me!!  However, I have never had any fluid coming out of my nose or ear...may be this is just some very small leak or may be infection fluid.  See how difficult it is to find out what is going on?  I'm very frustrated!!

Well, thanks for taking time out and wrote this post.  I'll keep everyone posted on what I'll find out in the next few weeks so just in case someone has similar issues, they can ask me later.