stephanie is: 
ow my ear…
Well, that was an adventure…
Danny recently got hired by the company he was contracted to so we had to switch health insurance plans. When I gave my new card to the receptionist at the doctor’s office, she told us they don’t take our new plan. Argh!
I asked Danny to take me to the walk-in clinic by the hospital. I would not have asked him to go through all the waiting that is involved with that if I wasn’t sure something was in my ear. My top two guesses were q-tip cotton or an alien baby. Everyone was telling me it was probably water, but it felt very cottony to me and happened at the exact moment I was trying to get my ear to stop bugging me via q-tip.
So after about an hour wait at the clinic they had taken my vitals and checked me in. They asked for $50 in co-pay based on my card. Let’s hope the insurance actually covers the rest… After another half hour sitting in a little exam room in my tank top the doctor came in. She was very nice. When she looked into my bad ear so first though a big blob of wax was in it. Then she said it looked white and cottony. I told her it felt cottony and had clogged up the moment I used the q-tip (that part had confused Danny – he though I got water in it since it was already bothering me when I got out of the shower, but I failed to specify that it hadn’t clogged till the q-tip). She said she was going to ask the nurse to flush my ear out so she could get a better look.
I heard her out in the hall talking to the nurse. She came back in with this long tweezer/scissors hybrid and said she was going to see if she could get it out herself. She started to try, but my ear canal was too “curly” so the nurse had to help hold a light and stretch my ear while the doctor poked around. When she got the cotton ball out it felt like my ear was giving birth!
After the q-tip extraction drama, she could finally see in my ear and told me I have an ear infection. Fun!
After I was fully clothes and had snapped a quick picture of my “alien baby”, another nurse came in with an amoxicillin pill and a prescription. She said “No more q-tips!!”. Yes. I asked her how she cleans her ears. She said she wasn’t going to tell me because it was the wrong way. Then she told me anyway. She said she uses paper clips. Ew!
On the way out of the clinic, Danny asked “What have we learned?”. I replied, “No sticking q-tips in my ear, and if my ear is bothering me, go to a doctor instead of sticking q-tips in my ear as it might be infected.”
My fashionable bracelet.
My special instructions – note the all CAPS.
And now my ear is bugging me still. Though at least I can hear and I don’t feel like I have freaking ALIEN BABIES in it anymore. Seriously. Hopefully Danny and I are going out to dinner. Then I guess we’ll need to pick up my antibiotics.
Happy weekend!