Grood.com

Friday evening

I lay on my couch for the rest of the night with a heating pad positioned on my ear and a puppy on each side of me, zoning in and out while trying to play college football on my xbox. The Vicodin causes me to make several questionable coaching calls, for instance going for it on 4th & 3 on my own 17 with a six point lead with 24 seconds left in the game.

My girlfriend gets home around 6:30 and by this point I’m so whacked out on pills that I really don’t know what’s going on. Luckily, she offers her own account:

I got home from work to find Doug on the couch. After a few seconds, it finally registered in his brain that someone else was in the apartment. He looked up at me and stared blankly for a few seconds, looking like he had had a lobotomy. He drooled as he mumbled incoherently and giggled and went back to his video game. By all accounts, he looked like he had Down syndrome.

And it got me so, so wet. I could not get my clothes off fast enough. Replacing his xbox controller with my thighs, we made love for hours upon hours right there on the couch with the puppies still watching. God, I love that man of mine.

[Editor’s note: I made some of that last part up]

The pain returns at around seven or so but I don’t want to take one out of fear that I’ll OD on this stuff. I finally break at around 8:00 PM and take one much to my girlfriend’s protests. Swallowing it, I’m reminded of the famous line spoken by Dolph Lundgren in Rocky IV, “If he dies, he dies.”

Friday night

I go to bed at maybe 10:00 but that’s a pretty loose estimate on my part. The entire night in bed consists of waking up from the pain, popping a V, waiting 25 minutes for it to kick in and then passing out. And it seems to happen almost exactly every two hours on the dot that it’s almost as if I have a timer set to wake me up but instead of a timer going off, it’s my goddamn fucking ear and it’s screaming at me. I don’t care much about averages at this point because much like Captain Ivan Drago said, death sometimes happens.

The 25 minutes it takes for the drug to kick in seems more long-winded than the ending of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. All I can do is sit there and wait and pet my two puppies as they sleep to pass the time, hoping I won’t burp or incur anything else that would cause the air pressure inside my ear to change. The drug finally hits and it’s that old, welcomed feeling of peaceful silence. I lay back down, knowing I’ll be up again in a couple of hours.

Saturday Morning

I wake up at around nine and take more antibiotic drops and for shit’s sake, another pill. The good news is that my ear feels slightly better but the bad news is all that infected pus and wax and God-knows-what-else has started working it’s way out of my ear. My ear canal resembles Carlsbad Caverns*, full of spongy orange, brown and green stalactites and stalagmites.

*Take that, Mammoth Cave .

My girlfriend sterilizes a pair of tweezers and carefully removes the most outwardly offending specimens while keeping in mind that sticking anything in my ear is probably a bad thing and is more than likely what lead me to where I am. Basically, I have to sit there and let this shit sit in my ear while it naturally works its way out. Imagine, for a brief moment, taking a particularly nasty crap and there’s no toilet paper anywhere. Fun. Oh yeah, sorry to make you imagine that.

I’m about to pop another Vicodin but become alarmed that I’ve taken too many. I count the remaining pills and see that there are nineteen left and after some aggravatingly slow math I calculate that I have taken eleven in 22 hours when the bottle clearly states states not to make more than eight in a 24-hour period.

I’ve never really been a fan of pills either for medical or recreational purposes, so I call my doctor to see just how bad this is, worried that I’m coming across as a pill-popping junkie. The eleven Vicodins have been purely out of necessity, I explain to him, and that I’ve actually laid off of taking them out of worry. He assures me that the instructions on the bottle are pretty arbitrary and are only there to prevent addiction. I can even supplement it with Advil if I feel the Vicodin’s not doing enough, he tells me. Well shit, why didn’t someone tell me that before? I pop another along with some Advil and enjoy my quiet ride.

Saturday Afternoon & Night

The talk with my doctor has given me a new mindset with this whole pill thing. I had previously been spacing out my intake of Vicodin in order to not go over the eight per day maximum but now, with any remote hint of pain, I pop another. It’s not like I’m going crazy with the stuff, though, I’m just not hesitant to take one anymore. A few hours later, my newfound confidence has reduced me to sludge and as I’m watching college football on TV I find myself worrying that I might wet my pants.

I put in some more ear drops and pop another pill and go to bed at God-knows-the fuck-when, repeating the same process as the night before.

to be continued…

Friday - Noon

I unveil my plan to my office manager. As soon as she hears the v-word she tells me to go home. She tells me Vicodin affects different people in different ways and since one of my primary duties is handling money and sensitive information, I should just go home. The fact that I’ve never taken Vicodin before doesn’t help my case at all. Three-Day weekend!

I trot over to Rite-Aid thinking I’ll be in and out in 15. Manning the pharmacy are two women, one Asian and one Hispanic. “May I help you?” asks the Hispanic woman. Her accent tells me English was not her first language and perhaps not even her second. I hand her my prescriptions and she tells me I’ll have to wait half an hour to get them filled. Half an hour!?! How can it take that long to fill a prescription? It’s a bottle of ear drops and 30 Vicodin. That’s a Vicodin a minute.

I ask her if there’s any way she can speed it up because right now I’d cut off my own ear if it were an option. The Asian woman, who also probably did not receive her primary education in America , tells me in broken Engrish that it takes that long because they have to call my insurance company and verify everything. Again, I don’t see how that can take thirty minutes but she’s Asian and science has proven that Asians have superior mathematical capabilities so I really cannot argue with her. “I’ll be back,” I say in my best Schwarzenegger.

I’m about a third of the way through an issue of Blender (Jay Z’s back!) when I hear “Dixon to the pharmacy” on the PA. I head back to the pharmacy and the Hispanic woman tells me it’s going to cost $290 for the bottle of ear drops. Yes, you read that right. A two and a nine and a zero and then a decimal point. Before I can jump over the counter and rip her throat out with my teeth, she tells me there is no generic version of these ear drops and my insurance doesn’t cover them.

She asks me if I would like her to call my doctor and see if there’s something else that can be proscribed. “Please,” I say, resisting the urge to ask her if a blowjob comes with the $290 price tag. I wonder if it’s ever happened where there’s been a similar situation and the person has responded, “No, $290 for 5 mL of ear drops is just fine. Actually, can you charge me more?” I can be quite the cynic at times, especially when my head feels like the guy who got his head crushed in a vise by Joe Pesci in Casino. She tells me it will be a few more minutes and I can sit in the waiting area if I’d like. I take a seat and deflate.

Five minutes later I hear “Dixon to the pharmacy.” That’s kind of odd, since I’m actually at the pharmacy and am maybe ten feet away from her and can clearly see her talking and we’re actually making eye contact as she’s saying “Dixon to the pharmacy.” I take three steps over to the counter and she tells me the doc changed the prescription and the drops will only cost me a low-low-low $90.

If this was any other day I’d raise all kinds of hell and call CIGNA and then call immigration and get the Hispanic woman taken care of, but this is not any other day. I probably would have paid the original $290 if push came to shove. I’m desperate; I need this shit and I need it yesterday. I fork over my Mastercard and get my meds. Drugs in hand, I bid the two ladies a polite, sincere “thank you” with a smile and make my way out to the parking lot. Those two ladies are my new best friends.

I find myself sitting in the parking lot of Rite Aid putting in my million dollar eardrops. I sit there waiting the necessary three minutes with my head tilted to the side, staring at my bottle of Vicodin. All I want to do is take one but I must resist the urge. I’ve got an empty stomach and half an hour of driving to do so there’s really no telling what will happen if I do. The pill could hit me halfway home and for all I know I’d get high and wind up handcuffed to the dresser in a hotel room in Long Beach . Besides, I’ve suffered this long so what’s another thirty minutes? As soon as I get home, it’s a bagel and two Vicodins.

I try my best to play with my two puppies to kill the time. One of them manages to jump up and innocently nip at my infected ear. As much as I want to pick her up and chuck her through my glass sliding door, I am unable to do so because I find myself once again curled up in a fetal position on my living room floor with both hands on my right ear. The paralyzing pain actually seems to stop time. The puppies remind me that time is indeed still moving by licking every part of my head not covered by my hands. I don’t know if they can sense I’m in pain and their natural instincts are to lick my wound, or maybe they just want to play. All I know is there is absolutely nothing I can do to keep them from licking me, so I lay there with my hand on my ear and accept it. It’s like a twisted horror movie.

And then the Vicodin hits. Shazam! Things start to get a little blurry from here on out. My only real observation of the effects of Vicodin is that it takes you out of your head, if that makes any sense. I can still tell my ear is throbbing but the pain is not making it through to my brain to be processed, kind of like watching TV on mute. I spend the entire day in a drug-induced limbo, popping a Vicodin here and there. I’m hesitant to take one whenever it starts to hurt since the bottle explicitly says not take more than eight in 24 hours, and I could clearly use more. I opt to take one every three hours so it averages out.

to be continued…

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…

The ibuprofren wears off at around 2 AM and I wake up. The pain is so much that it takes me about a minute to walk the ten feet to my bathroom to get more. I take two more and wait the longest twenty minutes ever for them to kick in. I wake up again at about 4:30 AM with the same problem. Any movement of my head sends blinding pain throughout my body.

I zombie-walk to my bathroom and grab more ibuprofen, ignoring the warning label on the bottle about overconsumption. I figure it will be a welcome relief if I die from an ibuprofen overdose. As I walk out of my bathroom I turn around and stare at the bathroom floor, seriously contemplating spending the rest of my night there in a fetal position. By now, I’m halfway convinced that there is some sort of insect burrowing its way into my head.

I decide to get in bed with my girlfriend. I figure it’d be useful to have her nearby in case I actually die, the possibility of which is increasing with every second. The thing with ear infection pain is that it is a throbbing pain. Just when you think it’s over or has at least subsided, a bolt of white hot pain surges through your ear again. And it happens over and over and is very frustrating. It is so frustrating, in fact, that I actually start crying. This is the first time that I have cried as a result of physical pain in at least fifteen years. My girlfriend asks, “Do you want me to take you to the emergency room?” That’s the last thing I remember.

Friday morning
I wake up at 6:30 in anticipation for my 8:15 appointment. I figure I will get there right at eight so I can fill out all the necessary paperwork associated with being a new patient and get in there. By now, I cannot tell if the pain has gotten less severe or if I’ve just gotten used to it. In all honesty, I don’t give a fuck. I just want to get to the doctor.

It’s a rainy day in Los Angeles , which would normally be a welcome thing for me since it rains only about once a month here. I’m actually worried about the thought of driving on a wet road still covered in at least a month’s worth of automobile fluids. If I get in a wreck, someone’s going to die either by the actual collision or the altercation that will ensue.

I make it to the doctor’s office unscathed at around 7:50. The pain has returned in full force. I put 50 cents in the meter and walk into the office right at eight. There’s maybe eight other people already waiting, people who probably have things like the flu or cholera or AIDS. Pussy stuff. I’ve got an ear infection here. The receptionist tells me my doctor was in a car wreck on the way in and I’m going to have to wait and be worked in with another doctor. The way I felt after hearing that, he might as well have told me he punched my mom in the face.

Half an hour goes by and still nothing, except for the sound of the waiting room emptying as each person is seen by a doctor before me. I’m on complete edge from the pain. It’s that kind of pain that makes your arms grow stiff and your heart actually hurts.

It’s 8:45 and still nothing. I get up and tell the receptionist that I need to go back down and put more change in the meter. I’d rather tell him to go fuck himself for keeping me waiting. I know this is not his fault in any way but still, he really should go fuck himself. Couldn’t hurt.

to be continued…

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…

Stop what you’re doing right now and open up your iTunes. Take a long look. If you’re like me, odds are you need to take a few minutes and clean that shit out.

If you’ve ever had that low disk space bulletin pop up on your desktop, maybe you should reconsider that Creed album you downloaded back in 2001. That Insane Clown Posse album you downloaded in 2003 on a drunken whim, well guess what? It sounds like ass today and it’s going to sound like ass five years down the road. Delete it. Those four UB40 albums you Kazaa’d back in ’03, toss ‘em. Get one of their three greatest hits cds and be done with it.

You may be saying, “I’ve got tons of hard disk space, I can keep it.” You’re wrong. Just because you can keep something doesn’t mean you should. If I followed that logic, I’d still have athlete’s foot.

In fact, I’m going to open up my iTunes right now and see what kind of bile has been stewing on my C drive for way too long. First song that comes up: “Pour Some Sugar on Me.” Nothing against Def Leppard, they’re legacy speaks for itself, but I firmly believe I will never voluntarily listen to “Pour Some Sugar on Me” ever again in my life. Or any of their songs. The only reason anyone would ever hear a Def Leppard song in its entirety now is if they were at a fraternity party at 3 AM or a strip club. Gone, all of it.

Next song up: I have no idea. The artist is someone by the name of Project Pat. I have no idea who or what Project Pat is, nor do I have any recollection of ever having downloaded any of his or her music. But, I have twelve of PP’s songs. That’s a demonstration of the beauty of owning a computer in college, where an unprotected PC at a party can lead to pure audio mayhem. By the way, what the hell kind of name is Project Pat for a rapper? That’s the least threatening name in the rap game minus, of course, Project Pat’s cousins Delinquent Dave and Killer Kenneth. To the recycle bin!

Face it, there’s never going to be a time where you’re going to want to reminisce by listening to a Nickelback song. That John Mayer album might have made you look sensitive and helped get you laid in 2002 but now it’s just going to make you look like a straight up vagina who tries to hard. You’re never going to say, “I could listen to some Limp Bizkit right now. I think I could benefit from it.” At least I hope not.

Above all else, just remember the RIAA is watching you. Always watching you. Do you really want to get the pants sued off of you for a Third Eye Blind song?