Phantom Liquids

Every swimmer gets water in the ears at some point. (They're also likely to be required at some point to battle rampaging octopi, distorted sharks, and Bluto-esque Communists, too, but I'll save that for another discussion.)

The common solutions include vigorous head shaking, strategic pinkie insertion, and application of commercial ear-drying fluids. Some folks will even plunge Q-tips deep inside their heads in direct contradiction to the warning labels on the package. One or more of these tactics is usually pretty effective.

But for almost a week now, I've been plagued by sloshing sounds from within my cranium. At first I assumed it was ordinary ear water, and was confident that I could purge it by using the common remedies. But none of them has worked. I've even spent extra time on the inversion table, tried sleeping on one side all night long, and done some enthusiastic aerobic exercise. But I'm still hearing sloshing sounds from inside my head.

One weird thing is that it comes and goes. My hearing will work normally for hours at a time, but then I'll have an interlude in which every motion of my head results in an intracranial splish-splash. Each noise is exactly like the ones I experience with normal ear-flooding...but this problem must be rooted in deeper, since I can't shake it out.

The other weird thing is that it hasn't escalated. I'd expect that after a week of walking around waterlogged, I'd start to feel some pain. Water in the ear generally leads to infection...or at least causes some sort of inflammation. But nope, I feel fine. It seems to me that if it is benign, my body should've figured out some way to absorb it by now -- after all, we've all been told that our composition is 90% water anyhow...why doesn't the excess ear water just work its way into the bloodstream or peestream or whatever?

Life is full of mysteries, isn't it? Oh well. If you have any ideas about what I should do, please let me know. (Just make sure you're talking into my left ear, OK?) Thanks, and have a great day!