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It’s 9:05 and I’m finally in an exam room. There are several notices posted around the room, mostly AIDS-related. Did you know that there is a rise in anal cancer due to an increased amount of homosexual anal intercourse? Neither did I. There’s also a medicine called Sculptra for HIV-related “facial wasting.” Note to self: Don’t get HIV or AIDS.

After the nurse comes in and takes my vitals, the doctor comes in for a little first-time patient Q&A. After making sure I’m not a homosexual alcoholic drug addict with a history of health problems in my family, he takes a gander at my ear. He sticks an ear-lookie-thingy into my ear, which might as well have been a red hot ice pick. I white knuckle the butcher paper below my rump and grit my teeth. “Lot of pus,” he says. “Kind of green.”

The doctor agrees with my amateur assessment that it is an ear infection. He wants to make sure by getting a sample of the gunk in my ear and sending it to Cedars-Sinai for further testing. He sticks what looks like a thin rod made of wood with a blunt tip on the end but actually feels like it is made of razor wire and hell. He pulls out what can best be described as a glob of evil. This glob of evil is placed in a little vial and wrapped up to be shipped.

The doc says he wants to irrigate my ear so he can have a better look. An ear irrigation is more or less an ear enema. Everything gets flushed out. The doc leaves and the nurse comes back in to perform the procedure. He first puts in a few drops to “loosen things up a bit.” I’m not sure what the drops are made of, but they feel like what I’d imagine sulfuric acid to feel like. Once the drops are in, I begin to hear a bubbling, boiling sound and I make a comment about it. “It’s foaming out of your ear,” the nurse says. “It’s not supposed to do that.” Thanks.

We empty that out and he then sticks a baster full of solution and begins irrigating as I hold the collection cup up to my ear. This is followed by more pain and I once again white knuckle the butcher paper below me with my free hand and almost drop the collection cup with the other. My breathing actually pauses for a moment. “Does that hurt?” he asks. Hmm, no, I actually stop breathing all the time. Finished with that, we take a look at the treasures that have been flushed out of my ear. The contents of the cup closely resemble dirty bath water.

The nurse leaves and the doctor comes back in. He once again jabs the ear-lookie-thingy into my ear only this time it’s a cleaner, more precise sort of pain. I guess all that junk in my ear was actually cushioning the inside of my ear from all of their instruments. “Psuedomonas,” he says. “Pseudo what?” I ask. “Pseudomonas,” he repeats. “Swimmer’s Ear.”

Swimmer’s ear, of course. That makes perfect sense because of all the swimming I do. Why, just the other day I swam from Santa Monica to Malibu because I’m training for the upcoming triathlon. Oh wait, that’s right. I don’t fucking swim. The doc tells me it’s not always swimmers that get swimmer’s ear and that any sort of moisture could have gotten in there and triggered an infection. That leads me to believe that ear infections should be a lot more common than they actually are. Outside of a normal shower, my ears aren’t really exposed to excess moisture.

The doc prescribes some antibiotic ear drops for the infection and Vicodin for the pain. “Chuh Ching!” goes through my head as I hear the v-word. He writes the prescriptions up, I make my copay and it’s off to work. My initial plan was to go to work and get my meds and work through the pain. I figured the Vicodin would let me sail through lickety split.

to be continued…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008 at 8:45 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.