I just got back from a totally kickass vacation in the virgin Islands, and am writing another needlessly long journal entry about that, but for now I will tell you about what is consuming my world at the moment.

My First Ear Infection

Okay, I’ll preface this by saying that I’m sure it is not my first ear infection. I was a child once, and like all children, I’m sure I ran the gamut of all manner of blight and malaise. My mom probably remembers me having several ear infections, but this is the first one I have had as an adult, and now for some reason I feel it is my right-nay, duty-to tell everyone about it because it is so much fun.

Yesterday I woke up with a slight soreness in my right ear. No huge thing, I figured it was just sore from wearing the headset in the airplane for nine hours the previous day on the way back from St. Croix. It was a bit tender to the touch, as my ears tend to be after abuse or extensive nibbling upon. By lunch I was at the wincing stage, and I knew something was not okay with that side of my head. It hurt when I chewed stuff, my jaw was sort of stiff, and my throat was starting to hurt a bit. Being an up-and-coming hypochondriac, I came up with all kinds of neat scenarios. My favorite is the one where I picked up some sort of unnamed organism while snorkeling, and it is tunneling into my inner ear and consuming everything it sees, all the while reproducing with reckless abandon. Once this army of ravenous bastards reaches my brain and sinus cavity, I’ll lose the use of my left side and develop spasms and slurred speech. By this time my flesh will be sloughing off, and my ear will be a rotting flap. The doctors will be astonished and will write stories in medical journals, and the photos of what is left of my head will soon adorn websites like rotten.com and consumptionjunction. People will e-mail these snapshots back and forth and look out of morbid curiosity at the freak that didn’t keep up with his aural maintenance. My mom will say, “I told him to wear plugs”, and the sale of eardrops for swimming will skyrocket. So an urban legend is born.

After that bit of thinking, I decided to visit the doctor and see what he could do for me. First the nurse came in and took my vitals. I weigh 182 pounds, for those who are interested, and she commented on the fact that I had lost over thirty pounds since I came in last November. I told her that I was on a revolutionary diet where I only eat raisins, and instead of walking, I skip. She didn’t laugh. Communist.

Anyhow, as soon as I sit down in the examining room, she has to take my temperature. She’s holding one of those thermometers they shove in your ear, and is heading for my right side. I deftly ducked away and asked if she had any other way to do this- something in a rectal perhaps- seeing as how my ear is a bit fucked up at the moment. For whatever reason, she just kept coming at me and narrowly escaped a karate chop to the throat when she jammed that thing in my ear. I had another ear that was perfectly okay, but she hated me and wanted to cause me pain. As I was recovering, she said, “The doctor will be right with you.”

Seven hours later, the doctor came in and asked me how I was doing. I don’t know why doctors ask this question, so I said “Fine. In fact, I don’t even know why I’m here. See you later.” This was all in an effort to avoid more ear probing, but it didn’t work. I told him my problem and my thoughts on it eating my brain and so on, and he looked at me the way people look at you when you are an idiot. He then picked up several sharp things to stick in my ear and took a look inside. I waited for him to say “holy jeezus, that is out of control!” and go running for the phone to call the CDC, but he just said “Yep. Looks like a little swimmer’s ear.” Liar. He’s in cahoots with that evil nurse and wants me to die. Swimmer’s ear? A little? No way. This hurts way more than a little. He said there was some kind of slam in there and dug it out with what felt like a barbed wiffle ball bat soaked in battery acid. Then he gave me a few samples of some ear drops and sent me on my way. The verdict? Apparently I am a pansy and don’t know what real pain is. No huge surprise. I did ask him if I needed to get one of those plastic funnels to put around my neck to keep me from scratching it. Finally got a laugh.

The white drops are supposed to keep it from hurting, and are doing a miserable job of that. They kind of numb the area and make it really hard to stand still without holding on to something. The other drops are an antibiotic that I hope is working. The trick is to use the antibiotic ones first, because once the other ones numb your ear, it’s tough to tell if you are getting the other drops in the right place. I discovered that last night when I noticed that most of it had left my ear and was now on my shirt. Scared the hell out of me, as my first conclusion was that something had exploded and my brain was coming out. I stubbed my toe running to the bathroom to assess the damage, and that took my mind off the ear for a while as I sat at the top of the stairs and cried, holding my foot and rocking back and forth with stuff dribbling out of my ear.

Today it is a little worse. Everything sounds funny, and it hurts to eat. Eating is something I enjoy, and I am sort of bitter about not being able to do it the way I’m used to. I think I’ll go back to the doctor today and see if he is just overlooking the fact that I have a deadly infestation of radioactive centipedes in my head. If I do go back, I’m going to put weights on my ankles and around my waist and tell the nurse that the problem with the raisin/skipping diet is keeping the weight off. I’m sure she’ll be really gentle with the thermometer.

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