Problem solved

UPDATE: Earwax debacle solved, thanks to Guy Lin, MD. I would classify him as one of my heroes, but by rule my heroes have to be able to fly. He had great head of half-silver hair. I was thinking about how I could talk about this without sounding a little too impressed with him (i.e. "If I were a woman, I would have wanted to play with his hair."). Instead of saying that -- because that would have been awkward -- I am going with this: If I were a 6-year-old boy and my mom bought me a GI Joe, I would want that GI Joe to have hair just like Dr. Lin. There we go. Not awkward at all.

The first of the three pigs

I have now been out of college/out of Idaho/in the real world for close to 9 months now. That means that for nine months I have been my own fall-back plan, my own caretaker, my own shoulder to cry on, etc. In short, I have been my own mother. What have I learned? Well, it's harder than it looks.


I won't go into a lot of detail, but I will give some examples from the past two days. Two days, out of more than 250. Just two days. Keep that in mind.


My most recent calling in church is Sunday School teacher in the Young Single Adults class in the Queens Astoria Ward. (Who counted the qualifiers there? Diagram that one, Petra.) The lesson was on Jacob 5-7, the allegory of the Olive Tree/vineyard. I casually spent my Saturday preparing the lesson, along with watching the Mets lose to the Brewers and the Yankees lose to the BoSox. You know, graft a bit here, dung a bit there. I had it pretty well figured out.


Come morning, I was ready to rock and roll. I woke up, I showered dressed myself, chose a good spring tie, put on my stripey shirt, ready to go. I arrived on time and even sat through sacrament meetings without falling asleep. I know, impressive. Then came time to teach my lesson. Once we were through the class announcements and had gotten over the "... Because you're engaged ..." joke (which goes, "I had a good weekend ..." [interruption] "Because you got engaged?!" [blank, dry stare; scattered, sympathetic laughter]), I had 18 minutes to teach. That threw me off a bit, but nothing summarizing and ignoring raised hands couldn't solve.

When there were about 5 minutes left in my lesson, I noticed that my left sleeve was sagging a bit more than my right. Strange, but not uncommon. I looked down again and saw that I, in fact, had a hole in my sleeve that exposed my entire elbow worn into the shirt. I stopped teaching and just looked at it, inspecting it as if that would help. "Did you see this whole in my shirt?" The class's response, "We just thought you had a rough morning." A rough morning. What, was I dragged behind a bus on the way to Church? Why didn't someone tell me that I had a hole the size of Cuba in my shirt?

Then it occurred to me that such wardrobe matters as gaping holes in the elbows fall under Mom's jurisdiction. I'm sure a Mom invented the elbow patch. And the phrase, "You're not actually going out in that, are you?" Neither of which I had the luxury that morning before leaving the house to teach Sunday School. A first example.

A second example finds us in bed this morning, 7:00 as the alarm goes off. I woke up and I felt that my ear was a bit waxy. I may have overactive wax ducts, but every so often I need to give my ears a good cleaning. However, from past experience and from myriad warning labels, I knew that Q-tips were not the answer. Once when I was on my mission (during which time, I must mention in this context, Sister Peixoto was my surrogate mother) I had Q-tipped (i.e. ramrodded) ear wax into my ear to the point that I could not longer hear anything. I was effectively deaf. Not a pleasant experience, believe me.

So 7:00, I knew that Q-tips were not the answer. When Sister Peixoto sent me to the doctor, all he did was use some special water squirter to blast the buildup out. If some doctor can blast out earwax with water, then why couldn't I? Now just to find enough water pressure ...

My first thought was just to turn my head sideways in the shower. If figured if I just positioned my head just right the water would shoot down my ear canal. Well, I did get water in my ear, but to no avail. I had to take a far more proactive approach. I needed to concentrate the stream.

I turned to turning on the bathtub faucet. That's a whole lot of water coming out of one place, right? PhD nothing. Water pressure, here I come. I turned it on full blast and stuck my head directly underneath, my ear facing upwards. Water came blasting in, into my ear, up my nose, all down my back, onto the floor, under the door and onto the carpet in the hallway, you name it. But after all that fanfare, it did nothing to solve my problem. Now it was personal.

I looked in the kitchen, no turkey baster to be found. I looked under the sink, no squirt guns. No funnel, no enema kits, no water picks. What was left to do? I had to be resourceful. I had to tap my inner Macgyver.

I started started to shuffle through the medicine cabinet until I found it. The perfect makeshift medical instrument. A tube of toothpaste. It was genius. All I had to do was cut the back end off, remove all of the toothpaste, fill the tube with warm water, stick the squirty end in my ear, give it a good squeeze or two, and just like that, no more earwax. I was so proud of myself.

After executing the plan, I was a little disappointed to discover that water being discharged from a tube of toothpaste has the same effect on excessive earwax buildup as a Q-tip has. At that point, I had to go to work, completely deaf in one ear. I then realized that I had no idea who to call. Was this an emergency? I wasn't bleeding, and it was by no means life-threatening. But then again, it rendered one of my senses virtually useless, and I've only got five of those. Should I go to the hospital, or a pediatrician? Where could I find a pediatrician in New York, and could I explain my problem to him if I didn't know Yiddish?

After looking in the yellow pages for a pediatrician for about 30 minutes, I realized that I really should have been looking for a physician. Ok, physician it was. But they all had such difficult names to pronounce, and what if they only worked on a referral-only basis? And what about insurance? I knew that I have insurance, but is it PPO or HMO or HIPAA? BlueCross, BlueShield ... BlueCross, BlueShield ... which one was it? (I later came to find out that it was BlueCross/BlueShield.)

As I sat at my desk with my headphones in (so that I would have an excuse to be unresponsive when people called my name), I finally decided to call St. Clare's Hospital, and they could at least tell me where to go. I dialed the number. "For English, press 1, para Espanol poste 2." Ok, 1. Well that was easy. "You have reached St. Vincent's Hospital, formerly St. Clare's. We are closed, effective August 31, 2007 ..." (212-586-1500. Try it yourself if you don't believe me.)

I then called a big general family physician place, their number was disconnected. (212-687-4106. Try it yourself.) I called the Manhattan Eye, Ear, and Throat Hospital (MEETH), the automated system told me to enter the extension that I was trying to reach. I didn't know, I dialed 0, not a valid entry.

At that point, I needed to get to work. So I went about my work throughout the day until about 8:00 at night, at which point I went home, still as deaf as I was when I left in the morning, and as deaf as I am as I finish this post. I'll get it taken care of tomorrow, I'm sure. (Keep in mind it doesn't hurt, isn't infected, etc. It is just plugged up, so no risk of permanent damage.)

I wonder at what point the first of the three pigs realized that straw was a bad idea. My bet is it was now when the wolf came knocking at his door, but far before then, when he went to Church with a hole in his shirt, or some morning before work when he found himself in the bathroom with a re-purposed tube of toothpaste filled with warm water shoved into his ear.