[img]958|left|Alex Campbell||no_popup[/img]Dateline Boston — A few years ago, I went to the ear, nose, and throat doctor. The experience was so horrific, I wrote about it. This week, I went to the same doctor. It wasn’t as dreadful, but I do want to write about it again. First, my previous visit, circa 2006:
I went to see the ear doctor today, or so I thought. Turned out he was an ear, nose, and throat specialist. See, I’ve been having this throbbing pain in my left ear for about 5 months, and while not severe, I know it’s not normal. My primary care physician didn’t find anything, so I took it upon myself to take it to the next level.
First I had a hearing test, which found that I had normal hearing, not bionic, as I had suspected and hoped. Next, I went in to see the doctor. He came in and asked me a few basic questions: how old are you, do you smoke, do you drink, tell me about the problem. I told him, and he proceeded to look not only into my ears, but into my nose and throat, too. Guess they’re all connected.
Then he began with the tests, which started out weird and got progressively weirder and more painful. As he began each test he told me exactly what he was going to do, which is usually comforting when seeing a doctor, but not this time.
He asked me to pinch my mouth shut. I felt like I was going to give him a kiss. Ick. Then he asked me to raise my eyebrows. What? Then he said, “Now I’m going to put my hand on your face and push. I want you to resist me. Right side — resist. Left side — resist. Good! Stick your tongue out and say “Eeeeee…” What the heck?!
Then he said, and I quote, “Now I’m going to stick my finger down your throat and you will gag. You’re supposed to.” Seriously. He did, and I did. Wonderful. Then he stuck a depressor on my tongue and told me to just relax my tongue. I had to stop him at that point and say, “Can you just wait a minute? After I gag, I usually need time to gather myself.” Doctor Dread’s affect was very flat. It felt like he was going through motions and didn’t treat me like the freaked out patient I was.
Finished with the ears and the mouth, he moved on to my nose. He looked up my nose and said it looked good. Nice compliment. Then he retrieved this contraption from a cabinet that looked like it was from a 1950s science fiction movie. It had a turquoise handle and a long narrow wire thing that stuck out of it. It looked like a skinny gun. At the end of it was a small conical thing with a hole in it. The doctor said to me, in a voice that indicated this was the most normal thing in the world, “Now, I’m going to give you a little spray in your nose to make it numb.” As he approached my nose with the ray gun, I held up my hand and said, “Now wait just a minute, please. What is this? And why is my nose needing to be numb?” He told me my nose needed to be numb because the final step was to have an instrument stuck up the inside of it to look around closely. Oh, joy and celebration!
I allowed him to spray my nose, and that wasn’t so bad. I asked him if I was going to feel the instrument in my nose; I expected not to, since I was supposed to be numb. He said, “Oh, you’ll feel the instrument in your nose.” The one time he shows some emotion is when he’s about to inflict the most pain upon me. Thank you, Doctor Doom.
He went back to his magic cabinet and pulled out a black wire with a tiny light at the end of it. We’d moved up to 1980’s science fiction. He showed me that it was flexible; when he pulled the end of it, the lighted end rotated around like some electronic worm. That thing was going into my nose. I could hardly contain my excitement.
He put that thing in my nose and oh, my word. Not only could I feel it, but it hurt! Ouch! I raised my hand, and he said, “Yes?” I told him that that was just my way of expressing discomfort. He continued. I thought about how much better I liked getting tattooed, and I remembered to go to my “special place” that I went to whenever I needed to not feel pain, like at the tattoo parlor and the dentist. I found out that my special place could not be reached when being probed by Captain Hook Junior’s claw.
He finally finished my session of torture and told me at the conclusion of my visit nothing was wrong. Perhaps it was just a muscle spasm, and, while annoying, was not anything to worry about. In other words, I had just spent $30 in co-payments and I would just have to live with throbbing pain in my ear. Doctor, I don’t know how to thank you. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m just going to listen to my iPod really loud, throw up, and inhale a little bit of black pepper. Stimulate the senses a little bit, ya know? Have a nice day.
Postscript: The day after that first visit to this doctor, I gave myself the diagnosis of pain due to the wearing of a headband that was too tight. When I stopped wearing the headband, the pain went away.
To be continued…
Ms. Campbell may be contacted at snobbyblog@gmail.com
