You Won’t Believe What Was In My Ear

Published on Thursday, August 1, 2013 by Katherine

…. Or maybe you will.

A few weeks ago, I got sick. Very, very sick. WHO gets sick during the summer?! ME, APPARENTLY!

With me, a cold always leads to a sinus infection. For more than ten days I was coughing, aching, weak and was having a difficult time breathing. After day ten I was DONE. Off to the clinic I went.

The nurse practitioner had to wake me up in the waiting room. I stumbled in to the exam room and plopped down on the table. “Miserable. Sinus infection. Snot. Can’t breathe. More than ten days… whimper… helllpppppppp……..??”

During my standard exam, she looked in to my ears. “This one’s red. Let me look at the other one.” I moved a massive amount of hair behind my ear for her to check. “Hmmmm. I can’t really see. Let me try to clean it out.”

Yes, you are welcome everyone, for this graphic account of my doctor’s visit.

Scrape scrape. “Oh I’m sorry! I know this hurts.” Scrape scrape. “I can’t seem to get to what is blocking the canal.” Scrape scrape. “I think there is something IN there!”

Only me.

I weakly mumbled, “Sand?” She replied, “I suppose it COULD be sand… but it looks like… SOMETHING.”

With great yet sickly joy, I left carrying a prescription for a strong antibiotic, Flonase and some sort of ear drops. Reading the ear drops box, I realized she wanted me to use the drops for three days and then come back for an appointment. In my spare time, perhaps.

It’s been almost ten days and I’m just about done with my antibiotic. Yet my left ear has continued to bother me. For the last two days, I have experienced a thumping in my ear as if a wind up monkey was banging away on my eardrum. When I woke up today, my ear was completely blocked, it hurt and I could only hear out of my right ear.

All day… “What?!” “What?!”

In desperation, I brought myself a baby nose sucker thing and set myself up to flush my ear. When you think about it, it is kind of like fishing, no?

I closed the sink drain so I could see what I caught. Let’s be honest. Wouldn’t you?

I was surprised to see clear water come out of my ear. Nothing? Why am I in pain? Why can’t I hear?

And then I saw it.

ONLY ME.

There, floating in the clear water was a single grain of millet.

Ladies and gentlemen, I had a tiny piece of bird seed in my ear. All I could do was shake my head. And of course run the thing out to my daughter to show her. After all, it WAS a pretty cool story.

OK, this actually turned out REALLY CREEPY.

My daughter once put a dried pea in her nose and it expanded. I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Or the pea. You know what I’m saying.

Do I have birds? Yes, two green cheek conures and two budgies. But HOW THE HELL DID I GET A PIECE OF BIRD SEEN IN MY EAR?! What am I, THREE?!

At least it gave me something to blog about. And more importantly, after googling “things found in people’s ears,” I am happy to say I’m talking about my EAR rather than an “orifice.” You would be amazed.