Monday, October 28, 2013

Possibly the dumbest thing I've done in my adult life

I was playing in the toy room with Isaac on Friday night.  His attention alighted on Rachel's old stethoscope, now moonlighting as a toy.  He tried it on his chest.  Nothing.  He tried it on my chest.  Still nothing.

"Fait voir," I told him.  Let me see it.  He handed it to me and I noticed that one of the kids over the years -- it could even have been Matthew -- had gnawed and worried at the grommets (earpieces) until they came off.

I settled it gingerly in my ears.  It was pokey and uncomfortable but not painful.  I put the scope over my chest and ... the right side slipped.  Into my ear.

The pain was blinding, searing.  I pulled it out as fast as I could, vocalizing something like "aaaaahhhhh!"

Isaac was solicitous.  "You fait bobo, Daddy?"

I could feel the blood starting to pool, but the pain dulled quickly.  To make a long story short, I scraped the hell out of the ear canal but the eardrum wasn't ruptured.

"My wife already told me not to stick sharp things in my ears," I told the doctor, "so we can skip past that part."  He was sympathetic.  "To tell the truth, I did that with a stethoscope too once."

But public enemy number one, according to this ENT, is Q-tips.

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