Remember all those things your mother told you not to do?

Ah. the sweet smell of disinfectant and cast plaster.

Just let me look in your ear...

So a doctor, a plumber and a priest walk into a bar....
I had to do something as I awaited my turn...

Well hell’s bells if they really truly are not good things to do.
Dumb as hell things to do, really. You know the things I mean…
Don’t tip your chair back on two legs or you’ll fall and break your neck.
Don’t run with scissors or you’ll fall and stab yourself dead.
Don’t play with matches you’ll burn down the whole neighbourhood and kill us all.
Don’t put things in your ear, you’ll break your eardrum and go deaf.
Don’t ever go out without clean underwear or you’ll be in an accident and die with dirty underwear and WHAT will the doctor think of you then?
You know, all those paranoid, goofy, never really gonna happen dire consequence scenarios that make us all roll our eyes and groan, “yes mom.”
Well, here’s the thing. That one about your eardrum? Pretty much bang on.
It all started when I had a shower yesterday late morning, after working at home a while and feeding stray teenagers buttermilk pancakes (which, incidentally, I make better than anyone in the known universe) with peanut butter and sliced bananas, and as I stood in front of the steamed up mirror brushing my teeth, chose most unwisely to try and do two things at once.
Now I should point out that I was running on a grand two hours of sleep, for reasons I will not go into just now. But suffice to say, I was not running on, shall we say, all six cylinders, or driving, shall we say, a Ford Mustang…
So, in my infinite wisdom, I decide, “hey, my ears are all watery, I could grab a Q-Tip and dry them.”
Now, just let me say I am generally very, VERY careful when I Q-Tip my ears. I never roughly jab it in, or go too far. And I never do anything else while I am Q-Tipping (not to be mistaken for cow tipping).
But this particular morning, a morning when I apparently chose to go with cute instead of bright, I not only do two things at once, I chose to go one step further into the land of unfortunate decisions: I let go of the Q-Tip in my ear and left it there a moment while I… well, I don’t know just why I let go of the damn thing… I just did. In the immortal words uttered in the aftermath of stupid moments throughout time, —all together now because you know you’ve said it — it just seemed like a good idea at the time.
So there I stood, teeth foaming with toothpaste, Q-Tip sticking out one ear, and I decided to… I decided to… hmmm, well, near as I can piece together, I decided to reach up above my head… quickly, without purpose but with all the strength of conviction I can muster… and in the process accidentally jammed that Q-Tip straight into my ear.
And when I say I jammed it in, I mean I JAMMED IT IN.
First there was shock: shock at the really creepy sound that exploded in my head, shock at the sight of the thing so far into my ear, and shock at the realization of how incredibly stupid I was at the moment, all in the space of about a bazillionth of a second.
Then came the pain.
I pulled the Q-Tip out quickly but carefully, and cupped my hand over my ear. A strange sort of numbness was taking over, as was a significantly reduced sense of sound, but a definite feeling of thumpa thumpa thumpa thwack, which I realized much later was the sound of blood rushing into my ear canal.
I stumbled down the hall, now starting to realize the true Stooge Brothery of what I have done, and announce to Lindy and Mike, who were sprawled happily on couches with tummies full of pancakes and nearly purring like kittens, that I have just jammed a Q-Tip in my ear, and surprise surprise, it hurts!
Unwilling to truly consider the damage I may have done, I take some ibuprofin and head off to take darling Lindy and Mike to town and get myself work much later in the day than normal.
By late that evening, my ear, down my face and into my neck was aching like a giraffe in a Mini Cooper, and my niece, the ever fabulous Miss Margery convinces me that I really should see a doctor the next day. The dried blood I discovered in my ear also helped convince me.
So the next afternoon, as I could not get into the clinic, I end up, with my mom no less, sitting in the emergency room waiting room for my turn.
Of course, I have to explain to the nurse, who funnily enough I have known for many years but won’t name to protect her (Ann Richardon), just what I did.
Laughing and shaking her head, she took my blood pressure, temperature, etc and then sent me back to the waiting room, her eyes still filled with mirth.
It was a busy Friday in the ER. My mom finally had to start the drive home to Golden, and after nearly four hours, finally I was on a stretcher awaiting the doc on call, whom, as fate would once again have it, because fate has a twisted sense of humour, is my regular doc, whom I will not name to protect her(Theresa Ross). She walks in and asks, not so much smiling as grinning, “so what’s this about you jamming a Q-Tip into your ear?”
To give her credit, she succeeded in not REALLY laughing as she had a good look at my bruised and bloodied eardrum with the Q-Tip sized gouge in the canal in front of it.
She saved the laughter to share with Ann as I walked sheepishly over to the desk to collect my prescription for the eardrops I was to use.
Don’t get your knickers in a knot though. Both of these women are women I consider friends, and frankly, the whole thing was just too ridiculous not to laugh at, and I could not help but join in.
So the top and bottom is, I am very lucky, my eardrum is bruised but intact, I should have full hearing back in a few weeks, I am bending all the Q-Tips to ninety degree angles to prevent over-insertion, and I am rethinking that whole underpants thing pretty seriously.