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Wednesday
I wake up at my usual 7:45 AM for work. By usual 7:45, I mean 8:15 by way of three snoozes. I notice once I get in the shower that my right ear feels a little stiff, a little tender to the touch. No biggie, I figure. After all, I had just woken up and I had probably just slept on it wrong. I’ve done it before.

It doesn’t really occur to me until Wednesday night that the stiff tenderness of my ear has been increasing throughout the day. It’s almost a welcome soreness, like a stiff muscle the day after a hard workout.

Thursday
I wake up at my usual 7:45 AM for work. By usual 7:45, I mean 8:08 by way of two snoozes and just laying there for a couple of minutes, feeling and massaging my ear. The good hurt is gone. Now it’s just a hurt hurt. On the pain scale where 1 would be raising your hand and accidentally sticking it into a slow moving ceiling fan and 10 would be a dominatrix shoving a steel stiletto heel into your penis while you’re handcuffed to the dresser in a hotel room in Long Beach*, this would be around a 3. Unfortunately, it’s not yet painful enough to call in sick. At least not for me since I have brass iron balls.

*I’m only assuming a dominatrix shoving a steel stiletto heel into your penis while you’re handcuffed to the dresser in a hotel room in Long Beach would be painful.

By around lunch, which for me is usually 2ish, I have developed the theory that I might be dealing with an ear infection. A quick call to Dr. Mom confirms my suspicions. “Does it hurt when you tug on your earlobe?” she asks. “Yep,” I respond. “You’ve got an infection,” she says, the world growing darker with each of her four and a half words.

Since I’ve been living 1,500 miles away from her, my mom has saved me tens if not twenties of dollars in insurance copays with her free diagnoses and expert medical advice. Sure, most of her advice is nothing more than “Put Neosporin on it.” Scrape on the knee: Put Neosporin on it. Broken ankle: Put Neosporin on it. Slit wrists, but not slit enough: Put Neosporin on it. But, her advice seems to work every time. I’m assuming/hoping her advice this time will not deviate from the norm. “You need to go to a doctor,” she tells me.

A doctor? Fuck that. I’ve lived on my own for just a shade under three years and not once have I been to a doctor minus one trip to my Persian dentist (don’t ever wear a white shirt to see a Persian dentist) and one trip to my optometrist, who looked like he could have been Robert Blake’s stunt double or maybe even Robert Blake himself. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to go to a doctor now. I suppose it’s a guy thing. Still, my ear is really starting to hurt. Pride will have to take a backseat this time around.

The receptionist refers me to his doctor and I trust his recommendation since after all, he’s pushing into his mid-80s and seems to pay the doctor a visit about once every other week. An appointment is scheduled for 8:15 AM Friday.

Thursday night/Friday morning
I take three ibuprofen before getting into bed. I decide sleep alone out of fear that my girlfriend might roll over in her sleep and make contact with my ear, which would probably be unfortunate for everyone.

to be continued…

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 27th, 2007 at 9:58 pm and is filed under Editorials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.