I've had this issue in the last 4 weeks and not going away. About 4 weeks ago, I went to SF to visit my family, on the way back I had a serious case of allergy from going out to an area near the coast to take pictures. After getting back to LA, I've noticed that I had some pressure on the back of the head and the tinitus level has increased drastically. Waited a week then went to my family doctor who identified that I had middle ear infection. Gave me 10 days of antibiotics. After 10 days, did not go away. I did not sleep well at all and decided that it was time to go back to my surgeon (HEI) and asked him what was wrong. He looked at it and also said there was fluid in that ear and gave me 10 more days of stronger antibiotics. After 10 days, did not work either. I got approval to get an MRI and was back there 2 days ago for him to look at the MRI. He said that there is no tumor and all he saw was the fat that was put in at the surgery. He looked at my ear carefully this time and said that he saw some fact and a little bit of fluid. Since I told him that the discomfort is around the incision area where the surgery was. He indicated that it is odd that after 1.5 year, I would have an infection there and he indicated that it might be infection of the fat. So this time, he subscribed me an antibiotics that is specific for this area.
I know it is too soon, only after 1.5 day of taking the new antibiotics, but since there was 2 other times the other antibiotics did not do much good, I want to find out from this forum if you've encountered any similar issue like this before?
My questions are:
1. He said that it is not the CF leak. I think he is correct since when I bent down, there is no fluid coming out of my nose. If there was some, it seems to be mucus since it is kind of jelly and sticky but clear. Can it be CF leak, very small leak? If it is, how would it be fixed? How to identify by myself if it was CF?
2. A member of this forum mentioned that this could be scar-neuroma, which I don't know how this can be identified since that area seems to be kind of hard to see on the MRI (it does look like lots of white areas on the MRI around that area). If it was scar-neuroma then there should not be any fluid in the middle ear, which I can feel it from time to time.
3. The dr. also indicated to me that he wanted to have me take a spinal tap to make sure I don't have CF infection, which I'm opposing to that idea since it is very invasive and not necessary at this time because I do not have any symptoms which indicates that I have CF infection. The main issue is at the area of the surgery.
My symptoms are basically stuffed ear, tinitus, head sensitivity, sensitive to sound, all of the usually stuffs that indicates a tumor. However, mine was removed 1.5 year ago and the MRI 4 months ago indicated nothing there either including the one few days ago. Once in a while I could feel the fluid move in my ear (all of this is on the AN side).
Thanks for any input.
