Norwegian Ear Whoosher CURED

Listen up, fellow whooshers. We have a success story. From Norway. And I like totally know her. How cool am I? I'm going to call her Hope because that is what I have.

Hope's story:

• Her ear started whooshing one day out of the blue. And then it whooshed for 6 years. It got so bad that OTHER PEOPLE could hear it. Her boyfriend couldn't sleep at night because HE could hear it. But the doctors? Oh, silly doctors. They thought nothing was wrong. (Been there, done that. Many, many times.)
  
• So she keeps whooshing and whooshing and whooshing. Like us fellow whooshers, she would try to lie a certain way or push on her vein and whatnot. Her daughter could hear it. Her coworkers and clients could hear it. She had to stop working as a hairdresser because it was so loud and distracting. Oh, I felt her pain.
• So God Bless Norway--she didn't have to pay for the tests. By the time she found an old blog post I'd written about the whooshing, she'd been getting tested for about 9 months. I told her I'd given up on tests because they are so expensive, and no one in the states seems to give a crap about my life-altering whooshing sound. I became a cheerleader for my Norwegian Whoosher. Go, Hope, Go!
• The power of the Internet amazes me. No doctors had heard of this, but then she lands here--Tales from Clark Street--and suddenly, she is surrounded by whooshers. So she tells her doctor about me. And her family. And suddenly they start to pay attention. So her doctor contacts all kinds of doctors all over the world and BAM someone in Hong Kong or something recognizes the problem. From Hope: "I've been having more tests done, angios, MRI, CT and stuff like that...and I couldn't believe it, but they have finally found the reason for this freakish sound!! Even the doctor was jumping and clapping his hands when they found it!! It's one of the veins inside my brain that is too tight for some reason! And get this, there are only 22 other similar documented cases like this in the WORLD--they are not exactly the same but alike." Seriously? A solution?!
• So she goes and has this procedure done. A small vein in her ear had closed. They put a tube up through a vein in the groin--OUCH--all the way up to her head. Then they put a tube into the vein to open it again. I think it's kind of like a stint a friend of mine had put in her heart to keep the vein from clogging. Something like that. And the sound stopped. STOPPED. Oh, sweet silence. The tube gives her some headaches, but she says it's nothing a mild painkiller can't help. And after all that time of whooshing, I don't think she cares about a little headache. She had to be on blood thinners and stay in the hospital for a few days. Had some bleeding from the groin vein as a minor complication. But other than that, it was a COMPLETE SUCCESS!!!

She has her life back. She's engaged. Her daughter is happy. She's lost 20 pounds because she can finally exercise again without her head WHOOSHING so loud she can barely stand it.

Hope wrote this in her latest email to me:

"I hope people like us with this whooshing sound don't give up! If someone puts you down, don't let them and fight for your health! I'm so happy that it's all gone, and I hope my case can help others in their fight against the doctors to be taken seriously and get the help they deserve. All my doctors said that they couldn't do something, but just because they haven't heard about it, doesn't mean that it does not exist!!"

So true, Hope. So true.

If you're whooshing, leave a comment here so any doctor that rolls by sees how many of us there really are.

Congratulations on your whoosh-free life, Hope. I hope to someday join you in celebration.


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