I Think It's Chronic

I'm pretty sure I have chronic swimmer's ear.

I had it first almost two years ago I think. A relentless itch, deep inside my brain. Juicy yellow dripping out while I slept.

In the mornings, I'd find little stains on my pillow, and dried crust inside and around my ear canals. I'd spend the entire drive to work, about twenty minutes, picking and flaking away at the dried golden crust until they were all clean and clear.

The rest of the days, I'd try to avoid shoving my fingers inside to relieve the relentless itch.

Seriously, this is the most obnoxious itch you can imagine.

I'd twitch all day until I'd find myself alone to scratch my itch, or itch my scratch, however you put it.

Some days, I'd shove the q-tips too far inside, and cause an air pocket, which would leave me deaf in that ear the rest of the day. For months I remember going around and telling people to speak up since I was deaf in one ear.

I finally wound up with a slight infection and decided to go have it checked out.

The doctor gave me some oily drops to use twice a day to cure the swimmer's ear. Swimmer's ear is what it's called, even though I haven't been swimming since I was a teenager. I wound up with it just by taking showers. The water just stayed in there for some reason.

Anyway, I followed Dr. Kagan's orders and used these oily drops twice a day, sometimes three, and eventually the itch subsided. Temporarily, of course. Until the next shower.

This went on for a year or so. I started getting lazy and forgetting to use the drops and got used to just always having an inner ear itch, and some subtle deafness from time to time. I'd just wait for it to go away on it's own.

One time, I had to go back and Dr. Kagan performed this irrigation thing on me.

He used this stainless steel plunger that looked like a giant syringe.

He made me hold this plastic bucket under my ears while he flushed warm water in each ear about a dozen times. This plunger caused the water to shoot out at least 100mph into my skull, which left me squirming on that spinning doctor's stool. It didn't hurt so much as it felt like a fire hose was shoved into my brain and turned on full blast.

That sure put out the fire.

Afterwards, I lifted the bucket up to the light and the Dr. and I examined the floating bits and pieces of infected golden yellow ear wax. This was an excellent remedy for my simmer's ear.

For a few months, I was cured.

Now, randomly, I will feel that itch creep up on me again, and I still can't help but to dig inside with my q-tips.

These amazing cotton- tipped sticks.

I take them to my room by the handfulls, and gently twist them back and forth deep inside each ear. I pull them out and I always check to see what color. Sometimes yellow. Sometimes brownish. Sometimes even a pink yellowish, which means I've gone too deep and caused irritation to the point of bleeding. The feeling of this twisting is utterly incredible.

I have even done this in the mirror to see my facial expressions. The faces are much like a dog's when you stick your finger in their ear to scratch and they tilt their heads and their eyes roll back and they twitch a little with relief. Then you remove your finger and stick it at their face and they always smell it. Sometimes they even lick it after they smell it.

I do this same thing in the mirror. The faces. The head tilting.

I always look at the cotton tips to see what I've pulled out, and I always smell them too.

Though, I have yet to lick them.