It was awesome. I was batting around ideas yesterday as I
collected final papers (I usually write on Mondays, so was thinking of a few
things that merited a reflection), and End Of School Year thoughts were forming,
when I felt a buzzing in my ear.
I asked my husband to come and listen, to see if he could
hear it too, or if, finally, I was going crazy. He couldn’t. Not helpful. But I
felt it move, so I was convinced. I had
taken a nap and gotten up to write, so it was conceivable to me that something
visited while I napped. So, you know...on a scale of 1 to Death, how bad is a
bug in your ear?
What followed was the Fairly Recent, Really, But Nonetheless
Time-Honored Tradition of the Frantic Internet Search.
I lay down on my side, hoping my visitor would exit of his own
accord, and Rob asked The Great and Powerful Google what to do if your wife
has a bug in her ear.
Two things. Put a blade of grass in the ear, hoping the bug
will grab on like a life preserver, and then drag it out. Failing that, drop olive
oil in the ear until you drown the little sucker and it floats out on a wave of
gold.
Sure. We did both. The grass was monumentally uncomfortable,
for those interested. I don’t recommend.
Then my 15-year old daughter figured out there was something
wrong with mom and came in to the bedroom as the hubby was peering purposefully
in to my ear. She rushed to the bed and shouted, “Oh my god, mom!” as if there were half a dozen tentacles
threading out of my ear. We need to work on her Crisis Voice.
Sure enough, Rob saw “something.” So we called Kaiser.
I was told to go to Urgent Care, not wait until tomorrow,
which is always heartening. On the other hand trying to sleep, knowing you have
a squatter in your ear canal probably wouldn’t be easy either.
The nurse saw “something” as well. The doctor did not. He
just asked how I could be so calm and pleasant with a bug in my ear. Sweetie,
this is nothing, I didn’t say, but thought. But it wasn’t. It was uncomfortable,
disconcerting, deeply annoying, but not painful or bloody. Dude. I’ve had worse.
The good side of him not seeing anything was that there wasn’t,
you know, a cockroach or a wombat in there. The bad side was that he relinquished
duty to the nurse, who was awesome, and who flushed the living daylights out of
my ear with four power blasts like a Super Soaker Battle Royale.
These assaults produced a little soft ear wax with what may
have been bug parts and an ear canal so raw and inflamed, I now have to put
antibiotic/anti-inflammatory drops in there four times a day for a week.
But there’s no more buzzing.
In retrospect, it wasn’t bad. My sweet husband administered
the grass blade and olive oil with jokes and gentleness. He grabbed his
chemistry tests and graded them in the waiting room with as much grace as if that were what he’d planned on doing with his evening. And he quoted fabricated statistics on the way to make me feel better--"No, seriously, it's way more common than people think--something like 1 in 6 people. Thanks for taking one for the team." He’s amazing.
The friend I texted to gripe about it was just as cheerful and
supportive. “Damn nature!” she said, when I told her we were on our way home.
Hey, it gave me something to blog about.
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