Chapter Four: The Sacrifice…
Pain, Suffering, and Styrofoam
By Molly Holly
On Friday, October 10, 2003, we started a run in Guelph, Ontario, and I was feeling real congested. I had a runny nose and my ears were bothering me, they were a little sore and plugged up. I wrestled the show in Guelph and felt horrible after the match.
I went right back to my hotel room and tried to get some rest. We were flying out to St. John’s, New Foundland, early the next morning and I thought if I could at least get a good six hours of sleep before we left, I’d be all right. Even with some sleep, I felt just as miserbale when I woke up. And it was about to get worse.
For the entire plane ride I felt like there were ice picks on each side of my head stabbing into my eardrums. I have never been in that much pain for that long a time in my life. And coming from a professional wrestler, I think that says a lot. I cried for the entire ten minutes it took to land. I could not get rid of the pain.
I tried everything to ease the pain a bit — yawning, stretching my mouth, all sorts of stuff. Nothing was working. After we landed and I was on the ground for a few minutes, the pain subsided a little, but it had traumatized me so much that it took me about an hour to pull myself together. While everyone else was getting their bags, I was off in the corner, crying in despair over what I’d just gone through.
Our trainer, who was on the flight with us, noticed me crying off on the side. I explained to him what was going on and that the pain was a lot less now. He thought that was a good sign, but told me to go the pharmacy as soon as I got my rental car. The pharmacist recommended eardrops and some Sudafed. I took them both and got ready to wrestle that night in St. John’s.
It’s amazing how, when you’re out there performing in the ring, you can block everything out and focus on the match. Whether it’s pain or some other issue, you can concentrate only on what you need to do. After the match I was coughing so hard that my lungs hurt. My nose didn’t stop running long enough to wipe it. Once again, I thought if I could only get a couple of hours of sleep before we had to leave the next day, I’d be all right.
We were actually scheduled for two flights the next day. First we were going to fly into Moncton, New Brunswick, then out later that same day to get to the Mohegan Sun Casino in Connecticut. I was dreading it. How could I handle being in that much pain again? And twice no less.
While we waited to take off the first time, I told one of the stewardesses what I went through the day before. She shared an old stewardess trick with me that she promised would help me out.
“What you do is, during takeoff and landing, stuff two hot towels into a Styrofoam coffee mug and hold them against your ears like this,” She covered both ears with her hands as she said it to demonstrate. “They say the humidity helps lessen the pain.”
There was no question it looked ridiculous. It was like when you were a little kid and you connected two cups with a long string, then pretended to talk into one end while your friend put the other cup up to her ear, like it was a telephone. Here I was, a grown woman, holding two Styrofoam cups over my ears.
As crazy as I looked, though, I have to admit, the pain was less than the day before. Maybe the humidity did its thing, or maybe I just convinced myself it didn’t hurt as much, either way, that trick kind of worked for me.
I managed to get through my match Sunday afternoon in Moncton, then got on a plane headed for Connecticut. And you know I had two Styrofoam cups over my ears for takeoff and landing!
When I got to the Mohegan Sun I went right in to see the doctor. After a quick look, he told me I had an ear infection in both ears. He warned me that both my eardrums could burst if I got back on a plane. It was great to find out what was wrong, I appreciated his advice, but I was scheduled to fly out Tuesday morning for Louisville to attend the OVW training camp they have there on Thursdays.
I didn’t want to completely ignore what he said, so I called the airline and paid $100 to move my flight back. This way I could stay in Connecticut one more day; mabe my ears would heal by then.
Monday was a live Raw. I figured I’d have a title match, I was the Women’s Champion at the time, but they actually gave me something much worse.
They scheduled me to do guest commentary.
So here I am unable to hear anything thanks to infections in both my ears and not really bale to talk because of a severe sore throat, and I’m about ten hours away from making my debut as a guest commentator on live television. There was no way I was going to whine to Vince, “Thanks for the chance, Vince, but I’m too sick to commentate tonight. Maybe next week.” That wasn’t even an option.
I decided to suck it up and hope that when showtime came around, I’d feel better. I didn’t talk all day, thinking I needed to “save” all the voice I had. Well, I went out there and did it. But it didn’t go so well.
When I was done, the number one comment everyone had was that they couldn’t hear me. That made sense, I couldn’t even hear myself. I could only faintly hear J.R. and Lawler in my headset, so it was difficult to react to what they were saying to me, and with my throat so scratchy, I sounded bad, too.
I stayed in Connecticut the extra day and flew into Louisville with Styrofoam cups on my ears on Wednesday. I still felt miserable, still couldn’t hear. Thursday I wrestled at their training camp in the morning and on Friday I just couldn’t take the pain anymore.
I went to another doctor, this one in Louisville.
“How closely did this other doctor look at your ears?” he asked.
“Not very close, to be honest. I mean, he was the doctor at the arena and they were pretty much just looking out for sprained ankles and things like that.”
“Well, let me explain to you what’s going on here. The infection has completely closed off the tubes in your ears. It formed an abscess against the eardrum in your right ear that may need to be surgically removed.”
“This is not what I want to hear, Doc.”
“So you can either schedule a surgery or deal with it for a while until it goes away on its own.”
Presented with those two choices, I knew which route I was going. I couldn’t choose the surgery because I had to work, and if I had surgery I wouldn’t be able to fly for a while. I knew our upcoming schedule and knew the shows weren’t within driving distance. I needed to fly.
There was nothing I could do.
So until it went away on its own or I had time for the surgery, I was just going to have to deal with being partially deaf in my right ear.
I was also going to have to deal with being the person you saw on the plane holding two Styrofoam cups over her ears.
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