SevEar Trauma

I must confess, I have this terrible habit, when I put stuff in my ear in an attempt to remove wax. My favourite excavatory tool is an old paintbrush that is ideally suited for the specialised task of de-waxification of the outer auditory canal. 

Anyway, after one night of particularly vicious violation of my ear, I woke up today, not being able to hear out of my left ear. This was a serious situation, not just because of the various physical manifestations of partial deafness (inclusive of this pounding headache), but because my parents constantly warn me against my disgusting personal habit, lest something like this should happen. It seemed like a dangerous precedent to let them know that they could be right.

So I quickly ran to the local hospital, where the ENT Doctor was my father's friend. When I got there, he was seeing a patient, and attempting to remove what seemed later to be a channa bean (fat lentil) from the nose of a five year old. I couldn't be bothered, as I had my own problems. 

When he was done, he asked me to sit on the stool near him. I did, and proceeded to tell him all about my misadventures in Earland. He reprimanded me, saying I might have ruptured my ear drum. Like I wasn't scared enough. 

He looked inside my ear, with an Otoscope (have I spelled that right?). He let out a sigh and said that it was just a fungal infection. He told me that he was going to have to remove the fungus, and put me on medication. 

When he said remove fungus, I pictured a Specialised Tool,  developed specially to remove fungus and assorted substances from one's ear. Instead, he tells the nurse to "bring him a broomstick's stick" (I translated what he said to English).  

Note the fact that he said "broomstick's stick".  Not Specialised Tool, or even Ear Cleaning Apparatus. Stick. 

The nurse left the room, leaving the shaking-in-his-chappals (sandals) patient in the company of the way-too-relaxed Doctor. The doctor, who started checking his email, noted that I was frightened, and in what he claimed to be an effort to cheer me up, left me with more mental trauma than the combined effect of the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy and Justin Bieber. 

He first picked up a toothbrush from his drawer. He gave it to me, and trawled through his mail, looking for something. Now, he wasn't a dentist so this was clearly a sentimental toothbrush to him. I examined it closely, and besides a peculiar crimson coloration that was all over the toothbrush, I couldn't find anything special about it. 

He found the mail he was looking for, and opened it. It had four Jpeg images. He clicked on the first one, and it was the same toothbrush I was holding in my hand, albeit with the crimson glistening like a liquid. I barely had enough time to think, "Red liquid, and a doctor? This doesn't bide well for me," when he opened the next one. 

I'm sorry, but this is hard to talk about. I haven't seen something as disgusting since I glanced at my Eleventh grade Report Card. It was a picture of a boy, not older than seven, with that very toothbrush impaled through his upper jaw, behind his teeth, below his nose. He told me that this child had slipped while brushing his teeth, resulting in the horrible graphic in front of me. He was terribly proud of the child for making a full recovery.  I was desperately trying to avert my eyes, attempting to erase that horrifying mental image from my mind, knowing that if I did not succeed in the next few minutes, I wouldn't be able to sleep for the next few weeks. Then I realised that I had been examining that toothbrush from close range. The toothbrush, that most likely hadn't been sterilised since it's visit into a human face. 

I felt like burning my hands, when the nurse returned with that epitome of human ingenuity, the pinnacle of medical achievement, the stick. The doctor (whom I couldn't look in the face anymore) wrapped cotton over it's tip, and dipped it in iodine solution. He then brought out a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. 

I know enough chemistry to predict the explosive oxidation reaction between iodide ions and peroxide. If the iodine solution had ionised, even in the least, stuff a lot worse than shite was going to hit the fan. 

It hadn't, as I prayed for this entire day to have been fictional, while a wet, burning stick was tunnelling down my ear hole at the speed of pain. 

That's all I can recollect without risk of getting senile dementia. 

PS I still can't hear out of my left ear. 

PPS It still hurts a lot.