Virus affects Porter’s hearing

Suzanne Struglinski

Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2003 | 11:10 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Doctors have told Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., to avoid flying for a few days due to a virus in his right ear that caused him some hearing loss. The congressman was treated in a Maryland hospital for five days last week for treatment of acute ear pain.

Porter said this morning that he was feeling fine and that the condition was more of an "inconvenience" and an "annoyance" than anything else.

"Huh?" he said jokingly as he answered the phone Tuesday, saying "Can you hear me now?" is also a line going around his office.

He plans to be back in Nevada by Dec. 24 and hopes to make a trip to Iraq planned for later this month. Doctors suggested he not fly until the problem with his ear has stabilized, he said. He has some hearing loss, but he said it is slowly coming back. He took a hearing test last Monday and Friday and will take another one in 10 days.

He said he is not wearing a hearing aid and isn't sure if he will need one.

"There are other people out there with real serious problems," Porter said. "Mine is just an annoyance."

Porter spent Thanksgiving at home in Nevada where received medical treatment for pain in his right ear he had experienced for several weeks. After he came back to Washington a week ago, the pain got worse and he went to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md.

Porter said he has had allergies since he was a child so he thought the pain was associated with that or from flying back and forth to Washington several times a month.

He was admitted to the hospital on Dec. 1 and discharged five days later but did not have to stay in the hospital. He went in a few times a day to be monitored, and he kept scheduled meetings on the Hill. The doctors are still trying to nail down the cause, and he is still on medication, he said.

Porter, 48, said otherwise he is in fine physical condition.