What a fungi am I

It has been a bizarre six weeks for this guy's body. At the end of July I wound up with ringworm all over my torso. Ringworm, for the uninitiated, is the most misappropriately named medical condition out there. Worm? Not at all. It's actually a skin fungus -- the tinea fungus, to be exact. If you get the tinea fungus on your feet, it's called athlete's foot. If you get the tinea fungus on your crotch, it's call jock itch. Anywhere else and it's called ringworm. Granted, it does end up forming a ring-like patch on your skin that itches a little, but the very name ringworm makes it that much skeevier an experience.

It turns out that ringworm is wickedly contagious, and you can spread it all over yourself by scratching it (which I wasn't doing) or by something as innocuous as rubbing a towel on your body to dry yourself off after a shower. By the time I had figured out what was going on, I had it all over my stomach and back. Fortunately, they do amazing things with topical ointments these days, and within a couple of weeks it was gone.

Then, about a month later, I woke up with an earache. It was pretty severe, so I made an appointment to see my doctor the next day. He looked in my ear, declared it an ear infection and put me on antibiotics for ten days. Of course, I hadn't had any congestion leading up to the ear infection (or any other typical cause), so my doctor told me that if it hadn't cleared up within a week to call him. Well, I saw marginal progress at best by week's end. Although the ache had subsided from "chronic" to only "most of the time," my head felt like someone had pounded my left ear full of clay. I was half deaf and felt like I wanted to clear my ear out with an awl. I called my doctor, and he referred me to an otologist (ear specialist).

The ear guy peeked into my ear and said "antibiotics aren't going to take care of that." Turns out that I have, you guessed it, a fungal infection. This one is called aspergillus, and is treated with the same stuff you put on the ringworm, except in eardrop form. One week of the drops later, and the fungus is almost entirely gone.

A couple of thoughts, of course, come to mind. Ahem, why the hell am I suddenly so vulnerable to every little fungus? According to the doctor, and based on my own obsessive online research, it's just one of those things that happens.

And it's bad enough to get ringworm, but a fungus in the ear? The ear? I basically had the equivalent of a yeast infection in my ear. I mean, if that's not some sort of bizarre twist on a Nantucketian limerick. I have no idea what to expect next.