First... Do No Harm

I regret making fun of my father in the last story because God punished me for it.

     This morning I went outside to pick up after my dog, when I was attacked--ATTACKED, I tell you--by a tiny moth. I didn't even notice it until it flew right into my ear. My left one. It didn't even give me a chance to swat it away by buzzing around annoyingly first. No, it was like one of those Smart Missiles that locates and then heads straight for its target.

     One moment my ear was blissfully empty, and the next it had a moth in it. I didn't see it or feel it flying around, but I felt it go in my ear, so I did what anybody else would have done, I immediately used my finger to get it out. Unfortunately, I probably wedged it even further inside. The fortunate thing is that, even though it was small enough to fit in my ear, it was too big to go all the way down. With the exception of bumble bees, nothing that flies is able to fly backward. If it had been smaller, it could have gone all the way down to my eardrum, and who knows what kind of damage it could have done.

     You see, that was my big worry. Losing my hearing. Even if I only lost it out of one ear. So I went over to the boss--my wife--and told her what happened.
     "I have to go to the ER," I told her, and she said, "Go."
     She couldn't go with me because she had to stay behind to feed my Dad. This is a guy who saved the world from the Japanese in World War Two, but at the age of 95 he's become helpless in the kitchen. I pray nothing ever happens to my wife and I when we're out by ourselves some time, because they'd find a 95-year-old skeleton sitting at my kitchen table waiting to be served dinner.
     I should have also told my wife not to tell my father what happened, because the last thing I wanted (besides losing my hearing) is becoming known as My Son With The Moth In His Ear.

     At the ER there was only one lady with two kids sitting in the waiting area. I thought to myself, "This should be quick."
     They didn't call me in until an hour later.
     Other people eventually showed up, and we all just sat there. With me, they probably figured, "He's just got a moth in his ear. He can wait." I tried to stress how worried I was that the moth would rupture my eardrum, I even told them that I could feel it pressing up against something, but, while I'm sure that they're all good people, they weren't in any rush to treat any of us.
     You would think they would have a faster response time, especially since the place could fill up. If you take care of people as they come in and get them out as soon as possible, then you don't end up with a waiting room with a backlog of people.

     But that's just me.
     The only time they hurried was when they herded me over to see the guy who wanted to know how I was going to pay for the whole affair.

     The nurse that initially helped me was a guy from Africa. Don't take this the wrong way, but he had that starving-African look and a pretty thick accent, but was a friendly guy just the same. I know there are a lot of people out there who are going to call me a racist for saying things the way they were (and I would call those people "white liberals"), but when did saying the truth become an act of racism? If he told somebody about the crazy guy with the bug in his ear, I wouldn't think he was performing an act of medicism or anything. Anyway...
     He came out into the waiting area, got three of us, and then took us to our rooms. When he walked back in a few seconds later he had my chart and asked me, "What's the problem?"

     I told him, "Something flew in my ear."

     "SOMETHING FLEW IN YOUR EAR?" he said, shocked.

     "Yes," I told him again, trying to stay calm so that he would stay calm. "Something flew in my ear."

     That's what I told him. What I thought was, "Hey, buddy, YOU have my chart in your hands. Why don't you READ it?"

     He decided to take it out by filling my ear with some kind of liquid. I forget what it's called. It began with an "L" if that helps any.

     "That will get the bug out," he assured me.

     "I don't think it's a bug," I told him, "because it FLEW in. I think it's a moth. Moths only fly in one direction--forward--so I don't know if it'll come out."

     "Don't worry," he assured me, "it always works. We do it all the time. That bug will come right out. One time we had to do it to a little boy who had a cockroach in his ear, and the cockroach came right out."

     I wasn't so sure.

     "I thought you'd probably use tweezers to pull it out," I said, but was really making a suggestion.

     "We might push it further inside," he explained, and I couldn't argue with the logic. So he put the liquid that began with an "L" in my ear, and told me he'd be back in a few minutes. He came back and asked if the bug was still in my ear.

     "Yes," I told him.

     He left and after awhile a doctor came and put MORE of that liquid in my ear.
     "We need to drown it and then the bug will come out," he told me.
     "I don't think it's a bug," I said, telling him the exact same thing I told the nurse, "because it FLEW in. I think it's a moth. Moths only fly in one direction--forward--so I don't know if it'll come out."

     I wasn't so sure about that liquid doing any good, because I was a little boy once, and as a little boy I tried to drown a few bugs in my time, and--take my word for it--they take A LONG time to drown. Another part of me was worried that the liquid was going to make my ear canal so slick that the moth would be able to squeeze its way even further down my ear canal and try to force its way through my eardrum.

     I guess the doctor realized that the moth wasn't going to drown any time soon, so he decided to use suction to get it out. And get it out he did. Piece by piece. One time he came a little too close to my hearing apparatus, and that was kind of painful, but fortunately he didn't suck anything out except the liquid that begins with an "L".
     And the moth.

     "Was it a moth?" I asked, wanting to hear him say it.

     "It looked like one," he told me, not quite saying yes, but not quite saying no.

     Well... what can I say?
     I went there because I needed a doctor, not an expert on flying insects.

     All's well that ends well, I suppose.

     The doctor prescribed some eardrops for me, because I jerked when I felt that pain and the suction-tube he was using gave me a little abrasion inside my ear, or, to use the doctor's medical terminology, it "screwed up your ear, dude."
     He didn't really say that.
     But I know that's what he meant.

    
    

Raising My Father

RaisingMyFather.BlogSpot.com

jimduchene.BlogSpot.com  American Chimpanzee

@JimDuchene