Friday, May 26, 2017

Hospitals, Doctors, Elevators,

So, I arrived maybe 72 hours ago at the emergency room at the University Medical Center.
I had brought this laptop, and so time really wasn't a factor. It seems like I was only there for a minute, because I would be lost in the cyber world the rest of the time.
I am living in a quit head.


About The Video

I haven't seen the video.

Really.

I highlighted a random section of a 32 minute jam where I wanted to see if I could even play with stuffed up ears, and so set up the microphone (at 1:30 AM) and sat myself about 3 feet in front of it and did what I did when I busk.
That, with the exception of singing.

My first attempts to sing, I felt that I would have had to sing a lot louder, and so I stopped singing in deference to the neighbors.

As it was, my ear being clogged caused me to play loud enough so that I got a lot of clipping at the distance of 3 feet which is where I usually sit away from the microphone. So I am trying to be louder, just to hear myself.
I guess the silver lining is that it will give me practice, singing loudly; which is alway a nice tool for the busker to have in his shed.

I hope the video at least plays; I'll pull it down quickly, if some of the pictures I grabbed at random are ones that I had meant to delete because they just made me look too damned ugly...

Back To The Ear Story...

Yes, the guy, I mean Doctor Hurley, did see an infection in the right ear.

He did confirm my suspicion that the information that my friend, Bobby, had given me, after my ear had first become plugged up, which was basically to run a Q-tip all the way in to the ear drum.

It makes you squirm just to read this, this is normal. I asked Bobby: "Isn't that just going to push whatever wax there is all the way to the ear drum, minus what happens to be absorbed by the cotton swab?"

"Sure it is," chimed Doctor Hurley, whom at first glance, I thought to be a guy whom I was locked up with in the Federal prison in Bay Minette, Alabama, whose name was "Hurdle."

"Hurdle was in there doing what ended up being 19 months for shooting someone under circumstances that wound up exonerating that particular son of a wealthy citizen, who was a medical student at the time, more and more as they unfolded, and his attorneys were hoping to be able to have the charge reduced to "a boo boo," once they got their ducks in a row.

Hurdle was a very pleasant young man with a quick mind and a thirst for intellectual stimulation. We found common ground by being the only two inmates in a pod of about 20, who liked doing the crossword puzzles out of those particular papers.

I wound up being in there for something like 26 days before my charges were dropped. I hope to tell that story sometime and stuff in into the "2010" spot in this blog, if I haven't already. If I did blog about it, there is a chance that I mentioned Hurdle. We had become fast enough friends that, a nice little reunion would have been had; during which I would assure him: "I'm never going to mention to anyone that I knew my doctor from prison."

When the Doctor walked in and said, "Hi, I'm Doctor Hurley," he must have seen by the look on my face that I thought that I knew him (and that he was a very light knocker, as I had forgotten that I was too deaf to even busk).

He agreed that my good friend Bobby, while maybe not being full of shit about anything else, probably had prompted me to tear open skin in my ear, allowing it to become infected, basically.

I was given a bottle of ear drops, free upon leaving; instructed to call the Ear, Nose and Throat section of the hospital "as soon as possible," to make an appointment. I'm going to do it.

I'm going to take all of the antibiotics until they are gone, like the bottle instructs, and am going to put the drops in my ears twice a day and let them sit in there for 20 minutes.

If I don't notice "an improvement within two days," I am going to go back to the emergency room as instructed to do in that contingency. That would be in about 16 hours, when I next wake up after taking the rest of this Thursday night off from busking, my 5th consecutive night off, after having only played for an hour on the night when it became so bad that I stopped.

Doctor Hurley had never heard of Kratom.

He seemed to shake his head at the notion in general that anything that I had put into my body could have contributed to the ear infection.

He listened as I told him the bloodcurdling description of screwing my pinkie into Harold the cat's ear "as far as I could get it," while Harold air-scratched with his leg on that side, as a way of directing and encouraging me.

"Even though I washed my hands after, there could have been some cat ear bacteria under my nail that could have gotten in the bath water and found its way to my ear..." The doctor seemed to doubt that.

When I go to the Ear Nose and Throat department, I am going to re-ask those questions.

There are a couple foods that stuff my ears up. One is sticky rice.

It might just be a coincidence that the consistency of sticky rice is about what ear wax feels like, in my ears at least, and there is the kind of wax that is somewhat fluid and emits a clicking or popping in the middle of a yawns or on elevators.
  
But, my ears will get stuffed up if I stuff myself with peanut butter or red beans, with or without rice, and this is pretty much consistent. There was a particular "honey fried rice" that made one of my arms go kind of numb and feel like I had hit the funny bone on it, unless I slept with my head angled another way on my pillow.

Even though the doctor didn't poo poo any foods at all, I am still clinging to my own personal dietary beliefs and am not going to feast upon peanut butter while trying to clear up the ears.

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