SELF-HEALING MANIFESTO #2

Ruptured Eardrum, Injured Brain (excerpt from 10/2017 blog)

i used to travel to Phoenix a lot when Dr Chikly did our brain therapy trainings there - back in the old days when life was real - before it all ended in 2019.
It’s 2023 here and now, and i’ve been studying with them for 17 years.

Recall those distant days now long ago when life was real;
now dead and buried and seeping into the fossils of indigenous ancestors of this land.

When Dr Chikly started online courses in 2021, i was still too traumatized to be shredded down to that.
i had too many years and birthdays in the hands of my illustrious colleagues on the road, and i still miss them very much; 15 or 20 years deeply etches your soul and life.
After all, manual therapy is anything but a touchless world!!!

Thus ends my introduction to the following blog from October 2017, posted in the midst of healing my ruptured ear myself.
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Excerpt from 10/2017 blog:

HEALER, HEAL THYSELF!

...en route to Seattle for school (Oct 2017) my eardrums ruptured on the plane. With life experience, i’ve come to bear accidents and traumas calmly.  This rupture is a first hand experience of brain trauma - my own!  
Brain trauma comes in many flavors - and the injuries we can’t see are the worse.
Dr Chikly taught me this; he did clinical research and treatment with closed head injuries in Walter Reid Army Hospital many years ago.
i'll pay close attention and call on everything i've ever learned; 
i’ll track and treat my own nerve damage from the inside out.

My clinical passion is regeneration.
Resolving pain and nerve damage is my passionate pursuit.
Then there’s the mantra of a mystic-scholar in modern isolation times:
Healer, treat and restore thyself.

…we reemerge from that vicious underworld - the hopeless dark night of our souls - to treat those who follow.
i knew yoga teachers like that - their injuries and how they healed are the structural tapestry for their gifts…

...When i got to my hotel eight hours after leaving my house Wednesday, there was high pressure and deep, searing nerve pain in my head, and fluids leaking out of my ears. The left ear was flowing some blood.
Although i study brain injuries, i confess to being mildly shocked by this, so it took me a full 24 hours to comprehend the gravity of my own affair. 

WHAT'S A RUPTURED EAR DRUM?  

…a ruptured eardrum is shattering of the tympanic membrane covering the inner ear, where the auditory meatus leads straight into the brain.

My tympanic membrane had burst from the noise and pressure at the security gate and on the plane. My ear nerves felt shattered and raw.
In a very real sense, my brain was leaking! 

i could already feel hot wet pain in the auditory nerves and the entire trigeminal nerve branch through the left side of my head - the ear, temple, jaw, and tongue.
The Trigeminal nerve bundle, or CN5, largely governs perception, expression, and the defensive reactions of a hyperactivated fight or flight.
Look how BIGGG that nerve root and its territory are, in yellow just below.
The trigeminal or 5th cranial nerve - CN5 is biggest nerve root of them all»>

The trigeminal nerve, CN5, in a sense overlays and can dwarf and exacerbate the smaller vestibular-cochlear nerve, CN8.
All these pathways were screaming and pounding against the inside of my cranial and facial bones; my ears, head, and face hurt in a heavy piercing way.

Through the force of the implosion, i became deaf in my left ear.
The thin membrane shielding my inner ear and brain from the world was torn open, much like having a mini-C-Section on my brain; 
or like a diver surfacing too fast;
and even sort of like the brain damage soldiers suffer being blasted by grenades and bombs.

Closed head injuries are invisible to the naked eye, but they cause progressive and insidious damage to the brain.

*The most important first aid tip is to stay calm, which helps bring the pain and pressure down.
*Every injury is a trauma and shock to some extent, and the sooner we grasp that, the faster we can heal.

...When i got home from Phoenix, and my body started to decompress, a low-grade infection set in - a mild fever and bitter drip down the back of my throat. Pressure behind my ears, against the bones.
i swallow plantain tincture right away, and rub lobelia behind my ears.
i must shield and clear the auditory lymph.
i inform the vile drip back behind my tongue:
“i am an unfit landlady and bad hostess for you, and for anything else that does not give life;
there is no welcoming home for you here, so go, before you get hurt.”

Meditating with the plants medicines in my apothecary, i quickly knew exactly what to take and when - and for how long.
i was definitely not alone.
Alternating potent herbal tinctures with lymph drainage on myself, the infection was gone in two days.
i gave considerable attention to opening and flushing my lymph system, so the infection would be carried away.
That’s what lymph does!

Despite being common, eardrum ruptures are traumatic injuries.
The human nervous system is delicate beyond belief, so i’m treating this myself.
i trust and follow the body’s signals - with myself and those others i touch.
i provide all my own first aid and rehabilitative care....
and i hope this inspires genuinely excited fearlessness in you to explore…limitlessness in how and what you create.

Here’s to wise and wondrous self-directed self-repair!
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Thus ends today’s tale circa 2017, on this sunny today in April 2023.
May you see, know, and discover limitlessness in your own precious body vessel;
and may you always honor self-healing as your path unfolds.

Til soon!