Our local Health Centre is staffed by a number of general practitioners, as well as a handful of nurses, who perform various functions in which the skill of a qualified doctor is not essential. We are registered patients at this facility.
‘Ear suctioning done here, enquire at reception’ reads the notice. And so I did. It is the latest in cutting edge ear suction technology, the gold film method of ear wax removal, and I had an appointment last Thursday.
My mind went back to about 1996, when a general practitioner at Melkbosstrand syringed my ears with warm soapy water, using a sort of water-jet gun thing and a little kidney dish to catch the bath water. It worked quite effectively, and I walked out half an hour later ordering everyone I met, “No need to shout. You can speak a little softer…” It was as if I’d entered a new world, a huge multi-phonic surround-sound studio.
Since that time, I have had minor hearing problems in my left ear, with sound effects as if I was in a rapidly climbing or falling jet-plane. Frequently a little wiggle of my pinkie in the ear canal would sort the sound defect.
Wednesday, I arrive at the appointed time and Nurse Anne runs me through the standard medical procedures, and reads to me the dangers of the treatment, repercussions and the disclaimers notice. Just so that I am approaching the treatment from an informed angle…
I lie on the uncomfortable hard and narrow bed with its white sheet and my dirty brown shoes. She presses a stainless steel cone shape into the canal, and starts operating the vacuum cleaner, with a head as thin as a hypodermic syringe.
Did she mention that this was the very latest gold standard of ear cleaning methods because they do not touch the eardrum? And that the old-style flushing method was dangerous because a sudden pressure spike could foreseeably puncture the eardrum? Yes, she has already told me. Twice. I told her that she had.
The appointment was scheduled to last 30 minutes. She had battled for close on 20 minutes with the right ear, resorting to the use of tweezers, and a sharp pointy needle thingy, something that looked suspiciously like a “Bic Clic” ball-point pen.
“There, that’s done, so to speak,” Nurse Anne confided as she showed me a strip of white kitchen towel paper with a small black lumpy ball sitting in the middle. She was like a kid who’d just done their first successful nose-pick experiment and was asking you to take a jolly good look at the bogey.
My bogey looked like the remains of a cremated common house fly, slightly smaller than a regular garden green pea on your dinner plate. I was most unimpressed by the minor proportions of the garbage, considering all the sucking and picking, and scratching and prodding. I was expecting something more like an unshelled peanut, at least.
The left ear was a different kettle of fish. Here the gold-standard sucking and vacuum procedure was promptly dropped in favour of the more brassy picking by ball-point pen technique. Well, here we will definitely be able to easily mine my fifty Dollars worth of wax, I thought to myself.
After my allocated time slot drew to an end, Nurse Anne packed up her vacuum and mining equipment, with the kitchen paper towel displaying about half a dead common house fly as the prize bogey.
“Mr Andrews, I am very sorry, but the wax in your left ear is extremely hard, having collected over a number of years, and has clearly compacted. I will book you another appointment for next week, but I have to charge you for this visit. Next week, they may charge you $25, or, if it comes clean within a few minutes, even do it at no extra charge – I will make a note accordingly on your file.”
She ushered me to the door, “ I'm terribly sorry, but that softening oil which you put into your ears wasn’t effective enough. Make sure you use plenty of oil until your next appointment.”
* * * * * * *
Wednesday just past, I am back on the narrow bed with its clean white sheet, my shoes are still brown. And they’re still dirty. A different nurse, Nurse Susan, is attending to the dredging of my canal. She has the cheek to tell me that I’ve got a crappy, bony, narrow and deformed canal.
Here it comes, I told myself. The excuses as to why she is failing dismally at the gold-standard procedure. She has hardly removed any bogeys from my left ear.
She made a number of comments about the hardness of the wax, as well as the frequency and difficulty the ear has when losing its inner skin layer, as the body gets older. Yes, here it came, surely,
“Mr Andrews, it is quite clear that the wax in your ear is very old and has super-compacted…” She made it sound like my ear canal was the site for the discovery of some dinosaur poo deep underground.
“I am not going to charge you for this consultation, because you paid the $50 for the treatment by Nurse Anne,” she explained, “I’m booking an appointment for Wednesday next. In the meantime I want to break down the wax by means of drops twice a day – I’ll arrange a doctor’s script for the drops.”
Here we are, three days into using the wax-dissolving wonder drops, and my hearing is no better, getting even worse at times. It is scary to even try to imagine what the world, and indeed living itself, is like if one is unable to hear at all.
We never appreciate our senses until we are deprived of them one day.
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