Pizza with the Parents goes about as expected.

 

Good morning!

So, Hubby is visiting family out west, Peaches is working away at her wee bakery, and Skippy is settling into the new digs up north.  In short, I'm alone this weekend.

Knowing I would be such, mostly because we decided on Wednesday that I needed some quiet and silence for a couple days, I plotted out NOTHING for my weekend.  Except...

...feeling a bit of guilt that I haven't seen my own parents in while, I made dinner plans with them for last night. (Friday) The original plan was, I would come up after work and make them dinner. I planned to make Pad Thai, which I enjoy making. One tiny problem: I had none of the ingredients.  So I planned to stop at a store on my way to their house.  Simple. Easy.

My mom had a simpler plan: Let's order pizza!

Simple! Easy!

So, I drove up there after work.  I was hot and exhausted, pretty much because I've been hot and exhausted for the last four months.  And if this stupid fake summer doesn't end soon and we get proper October weather, I'm going to melt and/or explode.

Anyway...

My parents are not what one would call tech geniuses.  They are not even what one would call tech aware.  And yet, after using the most basic of flip phones for thirty years, they've decided they need a smart phone.  But only one.  They don't need "all that fanciness" for more than one person. My dad is perfectly happy with his flip phone. And they mourn the passing of 4G.

After a conversation about technology and how Boomers are to blame for the advances in tech and the current state of befuddlement most Boomers live in. See, they put a man on the moon.  If they hadn't, my parents wouldn't been going through 500 unnecessary steps to get new phones. 

With that stellar argument in my brain, I decided to show them how simple and easy life with a smart phone can be.

I opened up amazon, opened up grub hub in amazon, and found my favorite pizza place, Marcos.  Now, Marcos has their own delivery people, but I wanted to prove to my parents that life with a smart phone is so easy, so I placed a sizeable order, and used my dad's credit card.  

Delivery was in 40 minutes.  40 minutes came and went. I got a spam call in the meantime.  I also got a text telling me the pizza was delivered.  My mom walked around the whole outside of the house. No pizza. Meanwhile, I checked on that spam call.

It was Grub Hub.  They wanted to tell me that they didn't deliver the pizza because we picked it up.

What.  

Buckle up. This is where is gets weird.

I called Grub Hub back at the number.  The woman on the other end of the phone could not hear me.  Weird.  So, then I called the driver.  Let's say English isn't that guy's even third language.  But he also managed to communicate that when he got to Marcos, they told him we'd picked up the pizza.

So, I call Marcos.

Well, the first time around I called the WRONG Marcos. So that was ten minutes wasted.

Once on the phone with Elijah, a very nice young man, I explained the problem.  I gave him my dad's name, cuz it was his credit card.  I repeated the order. Nothing. Nothing in their system. Nothing.

My dad was out $70, and we had no food. I was not letting this go.  Especially since my parents were now making comments about smart phones while I was verbally wrangling on the phone.

Then the idea hit me:  "Do you have anything under the name Tom B?"

YES!  SCORE!  

"Yes, we had an order under that name, but you picked it up."

Oh Elijah.  "Nope, we did not pick it up."

Elijah hits upon a plan.  "Come in, and we'll remake it."

To the Mighty Cube!  

Mom decided she was going to come with me. Which is a good thing since it was dark and I don't generally drive around Milwaukee in the dark.  But she drives this particular route all the time. So, aside from a couple, "TURN RIGHT NOW!" moments, we got to the Marcos in about ten minutes.

It's been hot lately, so I didn't want my mom to boil in the car. I left the car running. "Lock the doors," I told her.  "I'll be back in a couple minutes."

Walking into the store, which was really busy, I waited a moment and then asked for Elijah. The nice lady called him up and I explained to her who I was. (Her name is also Sarah.)  She said, and Elijah agreed, that a woman came in and said that my order was hers.  The fact that it showed as a Grub Hub order apparently meant nothing to anyone...makes one wonder why we bother putting our phone numbers on those orders.  Anyway, that lady walked out with my order and that's how it was that I was standing in the Marcos on 73rd and Good Hope Road at 7PM on a Friday night.

Oh, we are not done.

After waiting several minutes, my order was finally in my arms. I walked out of the store to the Cube where my mother (sigh) had climbed over to the driver's side and was frantically pushing buttons on the driver door armrest to unlock the car.

I'm standing there, holding hot food on a hot night and my 83-year-old mom is kneeling on the driver seat of my car pushing on buttons and not able to unlock the car or lower a window.

My mother was literally locked inside my car.

It's an old joke, for sure.  I just honestly never thought I'd see it play out in real life.

While I'm standing there, watching my mother try to escape, a man walked up to me and said, "That might be my pizza."

Wait, what? No! I am not giving up my pizza at this point.  I show him the receipt.

Apparently, and I cannot make this up, his name is Tomas B.

At that point, Sarah comes out of the store and says, "Yeah, that's the wrong pizza."

So back we go to the store.  At this point I'm so hungry I don't care what Tomas B put on his pizza, I'm about to eat it.  Once inside the bright lights of Marcos, we look at the pizza and sure enough, that one belongs to Tomas B.  Mine, well, mine is on the rack.

Okay, that's sorted.  But...there's still my mom who still hasn't unlocked the car.

I go around to her side of the Cube. Get back in your seat, I tell her.  Now roll down your window. I command, praying I don't have the child locks on the windows.

Thankfully, she's able to roll down her window and I'm able to reach in and unlock the doors.

We get back to their house by 7:30. Pizza was awesome, as it always is from Marcos. I will absolutely be writing a letter to the store, thanking them for their work on this, especially Sarah and Elijah.  Meanwhile, the Grubhub driver got a 20% tip for doing nothing, so that's a win all around, I guess.

Oh, and my parents are still not excited about a smart phone.

WE ARE SMART AND CAPABLE WOMEN!

 

Good morning!  

It happens every year.  Hubby goes on a quest to climb mountains in the autumn, and the kids and I are left to our own devices without supervision.  It's become quite the family joke, noting whatever weirdness happens when Hubby's out on vacation.

Here are some of the highlights of past years:

1) Skippy's car basically split in half...a block from home...in the pouring rain...a day before Skippy was leaving for a road trip.  (The Mighty Cube went to Nashville that year.)

2) A rat turned up dead in the garage.  Had to have the neighbor remove it because, well, the kids and I don't do dead animals.

3) Peaches shaved her head, and I had to help...even though I swore I wasn't going to.

4) My weed clearing project basically turned into an attempt to set fire to everything in the back yard.

5) My aunt died. 

I mean, seriously...you cannot make this up.

Which is why it was NO SURPRISE that last night, while Peaches and I were catching up on the new episodes of "YOU," Peaches paused the remote and said, "Tell me Rocket is playing with a toy."

We turned the lights on and then noted no... Rocket, our "mighty hunter" cat, was NOT playing with a toy. At least, not a toy we'd purchased for him.

It was a mouse.

A real live mouse.  Not one with its head torn off. Not one that died of a heart attack when it got a look of our army of cats. Not even one he found on the back porch and was toying with.  (All these things have happened.  But that's the complete list of rodent infestations we've had in the 19 years we've lived here.  So...I guess we were due.)

So there's Rocket, the mighty hunter, sitting in front of this wee critter, pawing at it every couple seconds.  In my house. In front of my television.  While I'm sitting there eating Chinese food and drinking saki.  (Okay, Peaches was drinking saki.  I'm still nursing mouth burn from my antibiotics for my ear...that's another story.)  

Now, okay, Peaches and I are not squeaky, frightened, girlie girls.  

At least, we didn't think so.

Hannah moved first.  "We are smart, capable women," she said.  

"Get a big bowl," I said.

I, of course, thought this would be like that situation in "Friends" where Rachel has to trap a pigeon.

This was not that. (Rachel and the pigeon video.)

It started out simply.  Peaches got the big popcorn bowl (we first had to decide if we wanted to use the big plastic microwave pot or the ancient mixing bowl.  I opted for the mixing bowl...but Peaches got both out, so thusly started the deconstruction of the house) I picked up the cat (no small thing, he's a chunk) and she'd slam down the bowl, trapping the mouse. We then would slide the cardboard from the bag of Chinese food under the bowl and walk the mouse out.

It worked for Rachel Green.  And, as Peaches kept saying, "we are smart, capable women."

We moved Rocket to another room.  Taco, our other cat, was comfortably perched on his cat tree, watching the whole thing without taking part.

Here's the thing though:  When dealing with a wild animal, one should be ready for anything.  Like, maybe the mouse didn't want to be trapped under a big glass bowl.  (He did not.)  Instead, he found a hiding place within the crevices of our tree stump coffee table.

Okay. This table weighs a metric ton.  Moving it, even for two smart, capable women, is a trick. And when there's a wild animal involved, one we do not want to crush (because that would be so much of a worse situation, note what I said about the dead rat.  I was not about to call the neighbor...again. I mean, it was only 8:00PM, sure, but I have yet to live down the screams of horror emitting from my face as he picked up the rat corpse and carried it out of the garage.)

We shifted the table a bit, revealing the mouse again.  This time, while we were screeching like children, he skittered across my FOOT, along the wall, and under a corner shelf.

Not the worst thing.  The worst thing is if he got under my beloved couch.  I'd never be able to sit there again.

This time, Peaches had an idea.  "Let's build a wall and funnel him to the patio door."

BRILLIANT!

So we built a bit of a mouse trail with books and whatever else we had.  I included a soft sided cat tent as part of the wall.  I mean, it's a tiny little mouse. He's not going to plow under the one small section of this brilliant wall and sneak in a direction we don't want him to go, right?  Of course not. That's crazy talk!

Once the wall was finished, Peaches lifted the corner shelf and put that to the side. The wee hunted mouse was plastered tight against the wall, not moving.  She used a long-handled cat toy and poked the mouse. "Come on buddy," she said.  "Come on...Buddy?"

Oh boy. Do we have yet another mouse that's died of fright?

But no. I could tell this one was still alive.  "Get the handle behind him, against the wall," I told Peaches.  "Poke him away from the wall."

Worked like a charm.

Except for one thing:  The minute he moved, we screeched again.  He skittered down the trail we'd built toward the door and we were screaming both from fear and amazement that we'd succeeded!  WE ARE SMART AND CAPABLE WOMEN!

And we thought we had it...until we didn't.

Remember that soft sided cat house?  Yeah, that mouse snuck right under that.  I could have trapped him with my foot. I could have. I was too busy running away screaming.

At this point, once Peaches and I regrouped, we realized the mouse was in one of two places:

1)  He escaped into the torn underlining of the footstool:

2) He was under the couch.

If he's in the footstool, we reasoned, we just put the footstool on the porch and close the porch. Done.

 

If he's under the couch, he can live quite happily given my love for snacks and my dislike for housekeeping.

"Get a scissors and cut out the lining," I say to Peaches, who is now waving a flashlight around light some kind of Republican in the Watergate Hotel.  She's got better knees than I do, so she got on the ground and started pointing the flashlight under the couch and under everything else.

I proceeded to sift through all the blankets, pillows, small pieces of furniture, and stacking them where ever I could, mostly on the couch and the big easy chair.

Hannah moved the footstool out to the patio. While out there, she studied the walls to find where this guy had gotten in.  Meanwhile, I fired off a text to Hubby, hoping for some idea how to manage this.

"Don't we have two cats?" That was his helpful suggestion.  That was followed with, "Peaches is familiar with traps."

"Hey, Peaches. So, Dad says you're familiar with traps."

She gives me what one can only describe as a "WITHERING" look.  Yes, she has set rodent traps. But she also calls her boss to come empty them when needed.  

"Traps are $12 a dozen on Amazon," was another helpful text from the Rockies.

"That doesn't help me NOW," I responded.

"Go to Walmart."

Let's ignore the fact that between the saki and the fact that we were in our jammies we were not okay to go outside the house.  I was not about to leave my domicile with Wild Kingdom running around.  Who knows how many of his little mice buddies he'd have in the house by the time we got back?

Besides, I have trauma from the days when we'd trap mice in our house growing up. I should note, my mom, also a smart and capable woman, called my dad at work to come home and dispose of the dead mouse behind the couch. So yeah, trip to Walmart was out.  But, we took a breather and scanned Amazon and decided we'd order a live trap. I know I'm able to empty a live trap rather than toss a trap full of dead mouse.  I AM A SMART AND CAPABLE WOMAN.

Peaches had an idea, "Let me call my friend Amy, she's good with animals."

Amy is a friend Peaches has had since grade school. She owns a rat and an assortment of other critters.   Peaches facetimed her.  After quite a bit of laughing, Amy had zero suggestions.  

At this point we'd been trying to trap this guy for almost an hour.  I kept saying, "I'm not sleeping in this house until we get him out of here."  Hey, I've been camping.  I've raised children.  I've babysat all manner of kids and I've owned different kinds of animals. I've probably slept in a house with an active mouse situation a hundred times.  

Peaches had another idea.  "Let's release Rocket. He'll find the mouse again."

That seemed as likely as anything else, so we did. We released the beast.  The beast who was very good at sniffing out where the mouse HAD BEEN, but not where he was.  Instead, this mighty hunter got distracted by all the rearranged furniture and blankets.  He got all caught up in exploring the new floor plan of the living room.  Useless beast.

I sat on my spot on the couch. "I guess we just wait now until he comes out again."

I was fully ready to wait the mouse out.  Let him run across my lap while I was watching TV. I would catch him.  I AM A SMART AND CAPABLE WOMAN!  But I was also quite tired of moving stuff around and I wanted to finish the episode of "YOU," we'd interrupted to catch the mouse.

We were almost settled back in our spots when Peaches glanced out the patio door.  "There he is!"

Sure enough, he'd hidden in the underlining of the footstool and was now running circles in the patio.  But he was really running circles.  Almost like...

"I hope we didn't give him a concussion!" Peaches says, fully concerned now that the wild animal was almost back where he belonged.  "How's he going to get out of the porch?"

 That was the next problem.  On Hubby's advice, I'd blocked the hole we found with a wad of steel wool. The best, easiest way for Mr. Mouse to leave was to reopen his route.  But I was not about to go out there. "I'll hold Rocket," I said.

Nope, I am not all that brave.

Peaches went out, removed the steel wool, and we closed the patio door, much to Rocket's ire.  He spent the next half hour staring out the patio door, watching the mouse run in circles.  We finally pulled the curtain closed.  Rocket snuck behind the curtain.  Honestly, I thought if he hadn't already proven to be such a waste of a hunter, I would have turned him loose on the porch and let him have the best night ever.  

As it was, the living room and parts of the kitchen looked like the dining room scene from "The Miracle Worker."

But, at least, the mouse was outside of the house and Peaches and I are still SMART AND CAPABLE WOMEN!  

We settled down and finished the episode, congratulating ourselves on getting the drama out of the way so early in Hubby's trip.  Now it'll be smooth going the whole time he's gone.

Sure.

Sarah tries to start a weird rumor...and a lifetime of public restroom mishaps begins.

 

Good afternoon!

Today, I thought I would rant about my ongoing saga of the plugged ear and the ENTs who can't seem to fix it no matter what they shove into the orifices of my head.

But I'm not going to do that.

Instead, I'm going to relay a story from my childhood: one that the ending didn't happen until literally  two days ago.

Picture it:  Michigan, 1970 something.  A grade school in a suburb of Flint.

(No, those pictures are not from my real life.)

It was a small, two room school.  The faculty was the lower grades teacher, we'll call her Mrs. Mann, and the upper grades teacher, my dad.  There was a school secretary, let's call her Mrs. Johns.

I'm not sure if stuff like this happened to me because my dad was the upper grades teacher and the principal, or if I just am one of those people folks aren't afraid to ask for embarrassing favors.  My entire life it seems like people don't have a problem coming up to me and asking to pick something up or get something off the top shelf.  (Which is funny, since I have my own struggles with carrying and reaching things.)  I get it all the time.  Dearie, can you grab me a can of cream of mushroom soup?  I know we're complete strangers, but can you keep an eye on my kid while I step into the bathroom stall?

Can you please watch this suitcase while I leave the airport?

(Even I know that's a big NO!)

Anyway, I'm just one of those people who wind up helping other people in odd situations.

Which brings me to that Michigan classroom in the 70's.

Schools are different now than they were back in the day, or maybe not, I don't know.  Mrs. Mann was overwhelmed, to be sure.  She had something like 35 kids in 5 grades (K-4) in her room. She taught everything to all of us, except gym class, which was my dad's thing.  Now, teaches throughout time have talked about not having a moment to themselves from the morning bell to the moment the kids are returned to their parents.  (And then there's like five minutes between the end of the school day and the beginning of the parental phone calls that fill the evenings.)

The big thing teachers don't have time for, especially back in my grade school years, was going to the restroom.

Also, our little school only had two restrooms:  Boys and Girls.  Everyone had to use them. EVERYONE.  Even the teachers.

Now the teachers couldn't possibly use them when the kids were using them...I mean, my father would have died a thousand times before he let any of his students catch him using the bathroom.  And such was the case for Mrs. Mann.  She waited until the kindergarten kids had left for the day and the rest of us were doing "quiet reading" or whatever she managed to put together so she could sneak away for three minutes without us kids tearing apart the room.

It was during one of these short absences of Mrs. Mann's that I felt the call of nature.  We didn't really have rules about the bathroom.  If you had to go, you had to go. If you were gone too long, the teacher would send someone in to make sure you were ok and not fooling around.

So here I am, little second grade Sarah, pushing open the heavy bathroom door, and I hear a sound I'd never heard before.

And adult voice coming from one of the stalls.

"Sarah?"

I'm amazed. Mrs. Mann had all those kids in her classroom, and she knew it was me standing there.

Of course, this being America, our bathroom stalls have about as much actual privacy and, well, nothing.  She probably saw me come in through one of the many slim gaps in the stall wall/door.

"Mrs. Mann?"

"Can you tell Mrs. Johns to come in here?"

I don't recall saying anything. I scooted out of the bathroom, walked down to the school office, and told Mrs. Johns that Mrs. Mann needed her in the bathroom.

I, of course, forgot I had to go. I went back to the classroom. And I had, I assumed, figured out the problem Mrs. Mann was having.

My first-grade brain went through everything that could possibly have driven Mrs. Mann to hide in the bathroom and then ask for Mrs. Johns.  And I hit upon the most likely reason.

Which I immediately shared with everyone in my classroom. I mean, I whispered it to Debbie and Kim and pretty much let it go from there.

Mrs. Mann, I surmised, was stuck on the toilet seat and needed to be rescued by Mrs. Johns.  I couldn't have asked my dad, even though he was stronger than Mrs. Johns.  Boys weren't allowed in the girls room NO MATTER WHAT.

Now, of course, that was absolutely probably not the real reason. But with all my experience in my life to that point, that was the only explanation I could come up with.

Mrs. Mann returned to the classroom without a word about it.  Most of the kids, because they were older than I was, and also because I'd already achieved a bit of a reputation as an imaginative storyteller, didn't repeat the rumor I'd started.

Now, first grade is a very long time ago.  Like, more than fifty years ago.  And it wasn't until last week, when I was using the bathroom myself, that I figured out what the real reason was.

I have no way to prove this, of course.  Mrs. Mann and Mrs. Johns, if they haven't passed away, are long out of my life.  And there's no way I'm going to set my mom to digging up their whereabouts so I can ask them this question:

"Hey, back in the early 70's, that one time Mrs. Manns was in the bathroom and asked me to get Mrs. Johns...was she really stuck on the toilet, or did she get her female punctuation unexpectedly?"

There's no way on early I'm going to ask that question anywhere but behind a wall of anonymity...like a blog!

What's funny is that all the years I've been in uncomfortable female punctuation situations in public bathrooms, it never occurred to me that this was why I'd been sent for help.  All these years, I was satisfied with the idea that my teacher had gotten herself stuck on the toilet seat (she was not a heavy lady at all...) and needed the school secretary to rescue her.  Nope, it took until now, now that I'm beyond the whole female punctuation thing, that I realize the poor woman probably just needed some female protection.

I've always said I'd never go back to high school.  College, yes.  Geez, I'd have so much MORE fun in college if I went back now, knowing what I know about real life. But I never thought about going back to my grade school days and righting what I managed to mess up.  I would love to go back to this moment in time and be more helpful.

Meanwhile, I am, and continue to be, an idiot.

FIVE FOR FRIDAY: (on Sunday) There's no crying in PT!

 

Happy Friday all!  First off, let's get this out of the way: YES, there is crying in PT.  But this wee was especially frustrating for me.  We know I generally only cry when I'm angry, so you know if I was crying in PT on Tuesday, I was in a rage. Everything just built up to a boiling point. Here's a countdown of five reasons why I cried in PT on Tuesday.

5) My recently replaced right knee.

Not really a problem except that it's not 100% and will never be 100% and it seems like I lost all of last year to this knee and now I've lost my inspiration to write since this knee was replaced. Is there where my creativity lived? In my now defunct right knee?

4) My left knee.

My left knee needs to be replaced. We've known this for a while.  It's just that now, since April, it's not responding to injections and it's starting to hurt in the way my right knee did last year.

3) My hands and feet.

My hands and feet are riddled with arthritis and hurt quite often, but since the first thaw this year they've been swollen and painful in spite of my usual treatments.  I hate spring, it always triggers the worst in my hands and feet. I'm like one of those Biblical guys they were always carrying around on mats in the New Testament.

No, seriously, I would LOVE IT if my friends could carry me right to Jesus to get healed!

2) My right ear.

See the blog from Wednesday.    Here's the link  Let's just say I'm suffering, once again, at the hands of incompetent medical folk who take my deductible and run over and over again.

1) My left shoulder.

This is a workman's comp thing. It's why I'm in PT right now anyway. I got hurt at work.  I'm going to PT like a good girl.  I don't mind PT, it's just that it hurts and the exercises hurt and I'm terrified this shoulder is going to mean something more than just a few sessions with my buddy, Bill, the PT guy.

So it all built up, all the pain I've got going on.  I can't sleep, because I normally sleep on my left side.  But that's my painful shoulder. I can't sleep on my right side because my ear drain blood and puss and the towel I cover my pillow with keeps slipping.  I can't hear much at work, so that's a pain in the rump.  My knees hurt so walking is a problem, but that's fine because if I did walk more my feet would scream more.

Do you get what's happening here?  Frustration overload!

Now Bill, my PT guy, is a gem.  He did my PT for my knee.  I love him, and not just because his office is a four-minute drive from my house.  He's patient, he's willing to try pretty much anything.  But...this shoulder might have him stumped.  So when I came in crying on Tuesday, he suggested we turn things up a notch and I go to the ortho guys.

You remember the ortho guys. The ones who neglected to ask if I snored and therefore nearly killed me with anesthesia during my knee surgery. You want to send me there?

In Bill's defense, he does believe in the whole, "there's no crying in PT."  He's wrong, but that's what he believes.

We went through our exercises and Bill's promised to not mention the ortho guys again unless absolutely necessary.  Stay tuned...

A doctor's appointment so bad, it gets its own blog! (Dr. House...we need you!)

 

Good day everyone!

So I was going to get a "Five for Friday" going about my day yesterday, and I had it all written in my head.  Until I had to go to the ear doctor...again...and emerged from that so angry I nearly crapped my pants on the way home. I'm not even kidding.

WARNING:  This post MAY include Rated R language as my internal speaker is not what one would call a good Christian girl with a clean mouth. No, my internal speaker is a 1940's sailor on shore leave after about six shots of the local alcoholic brew. This is really going to be more of a manifesto rant than a blog.  I'm not kidding...do not let the kiddies read this.

If you are offended by the verbal vulgarity arts, I suggest you not continue reading this.

Okay, so here's how this went down. (And I'm using actual notes from my actual MyChart, so...you know...I'm not making this up.)

On May 12 of this year, I went to urgent care because my ear was plugged and I was having a hard time hearing.  Below are some of the notes from that appointment:

Patient is a 87-year-old female who presents with right ear fullness and pressure for a week and a half prior to arrival. She reports feeling that her hearing is muffled and underwater. She feels there is pressure inside of her ear. Last week she had ear pain which resolved.

Right Ear: No drainage, swelling or tenderness. A middle ear effusion is present. There is no impacted cerumen. No foreign body. No mastoid tenderness. No hemotympanum. Tympanic membrane is not injected or erythematous.

Okay, I'm not 87, I'm 57, but that can be forgiven. I've had issues with itchy ears for years and this was the first doctor who actually listened to me and wrote me a referral for not just an ENT, but also an Alergist and a Dermatologist. This doctor suggested I take a number of decongestants and wait and see if the ear opened up on its own, as they tend to do this time of year because seasonal allergies, (which I have only recently started experiencing) are so big right now.

Thusly it was that I found myself at the office of an ENT on May 21 of this year. Below are some of the notes from that appointment:

A 57 y.o. female who I am asked to see at the request of who comes in with a plugged right ear with decreased hearing over the last couple of weeks. She was seen in urgent care and told to come here for fluid in her ear. She has not had a history of fluid in her ear. She has some mild allergies. She has a history of obstructive sleep apnea.

There is a middle ear effusion on the right. Discussed options with the patient what she wanted proceed with a myringotomy so right myringotomy was performed under topical phenol anesthesia under the microscope. Serous fluid was obtained from the middle ear. She notes dramatic improvement. Left ear was clear. Nasal exam unremarkable. Oral cavity pharynx clear. Neck exam negative for mass or adenopathy.

I'd like to point out that while he got my age right, he did NOT look at my left ear, my throat, my nose or anything other than my right ear. (I'm reading the clinical notes for the first time as I write this.) for those of you not familiar, a myringotomy is where the "doctor" (I'll be using quotation marks when referring to this fartnozzle now.) sticks a needle with a sponge of numbing meds in your ear. That burns like a BITCH for about 5 seconds. Then it's gone and he sticks another needle, this time combined with a vacuum cleaner, deep into the ear and cuts a hole in the eardrum and sucks out fluid. Yes, I did feel improvement which last all the way back to my car in the parking lot and the ear closed up again.

I contact the office and they said it was a process, and would take time for the ear to fully drain.  For a couple days a lovely yellow goo would flood out of my ear without warning. Super fun when one is at work.

Being a good girl, one taught to respect my elders, especially "doctors," I waited as I was told to wait.  I waited until the oozing stopped, the ear was still plugged, and my hearing got worse. But at least it hurt now, so that's great.

I went in on June 10.  Below are the notes: 

Explained options including a repeat myringotomy versus tube placement as she proceeded with the myringotomy. A right myringotomy was performed and the topical anesthesia with phenol. Serous fluid was obtained from the middle ear. Tympanic membrane was somewhat thickened. She noticed immediate relief.

Now, what's important here are things the "doctor" did NOT put in the notes. Like, how I asked him what he should do, another draining, or put in the tube. He said, "wait and let's drain it again, and see if that works."

He also used the word "infection" TWICE in the appointment. Now, I don't know about you, but the word "infection" especially when combined with "ear" means antibiotics. I didn't say anything in the appointment, because one's brain is not all that clear immediately after having needles and vacuum cleaners shoved deep into the ear. But I messaged the "doctor's" office again the next day:

Hello! it didnt click with me yesterday when i was in the office but Dr. Kass used the word "infection" twice. If I have an ear infection shouldn't I be on antibiotics? thanks, have a great evening.

The response was neither quick nor clear:

Your ear has fluid in it but this is not an actual acute infection which is why you are not on antibiotics. Treatment is drainage of the fluid. If the fluid recurs we would then place a tube. There is no acute infection requiring antibiotics but rather just a plugged eustachian tube.

That brings us to yesterday...June 17. I was already pretty fragile, for reasons we'll cover in my next Five for Friday. So when I called on Monday the 16th to schedule I was very clear that I wanted the tube in my ear. I was done fooling around with this. (Note: My portion of these appointments has been $120 each for the first two. Another thing to consider. Also, since when I can I get in to an ENT just any time I want? Can someone say "BIG STUPID RED FLAG?"

So I get to the "doctors" office. I get in the chair, we chat nicely for a moment. He shoves the stinging sponge in there and then begins 20 minutes of what I would call a mining expedition.

20 minutes of poking, drilling, cutting, and draining. Fun fact, the numbing agent that stings for five seconds really only works for about three minutes. So I started gripping the arm rests and pressing into the chair, as one does when one wants to stay still, but is experiencing extreme and sharp pain.

"Doctor" says, "oh does that hurt?"

As a wise friend said when I told her this story, "No shit, Sherlock."

More numbing, more stinging, only this time he didn't wait for it to take full effect, so more drilling, more sucking, more screeching sounds in my ear, more pain.

"Your ear drum is really thick. I'm going to try cutting it in a different spot."

Spoiler...THAT DIDN'T WORK!

Okay, here are the notes:

Patient comes in for follow-up. Right ear still feeling plugged.

 

Examination of microscope reveals thick mucoid effusion with retraction. A right myringotomy was performed under sterile technique and found to have thickened eardrum with very thick middle ear mucosa. There was some fluid as well. Tympanic membranes was too thick to place a tube.

 

Impression. Right otitis media with effusion with severe edema of the tympanic membranes and mucosa.

 

Plan. Omnicef. Ciprodex drops. Keep the ear dry. Follow-up in 2 weeks for recheck and possible tube placement at that time.

What does all that mean?

Well he put me on not one, but TWO antibiotics.

FOR A FARTING INFECTION I DON'T HAVE???????????????????????

(I did warn you.)

Now, fun fact, I have allergies to some of the more common antibiotics. So he's telling me, after cutting AT LEAST 5 holes in my eardrum, that it's too thick for a tube at the moment. He asks if I have a problem with antibiotics. I tell him what I allergies are. (WHICH HE SHOULD KNOW SINCE IT'S ALL IN MY FREAKING MYCHART NOTES!)

Why do we bother filling out those preregistrations every time? The jackwagon doctors clearly don't read them. This is not the first time I've been prescribed something that sent me to urgent care with a reaction by some "doctor" who didn't get enough of a shit to read the notes I have to fill in for EVERY SINGLE FREAKING APPOINTMENT.

The second I told him my allergies, one would have thought I just informed him that I also shot holes in all four of his tires. He was that inconvenienced by my allergy. He had to think of another two antibiotics that would heal the INFECTION I DIDN'T HAVE but not kill me in the process.

Oh yeah and come back in two weeks. Also, one of the prescriptions was for ear drops. Now, this is fine, but this fucktard's last instruction to me, after telling me to come back in two weeks, was

"Keep your ear dry."

I mean, other than the fact that I have BLOOD AND YELLOW OOZE coming out of the ear and WHITE DROPS GOING IN, I AM BEING SUPER CAREFUL about keeping it dry. Now showers for me. (That's going to go over great at work.)

By the time I'm at the pharmacy (those poor people) I was in tears and raging. My ear hurt, I can't hear out of it, but sound gets stuck in my head and it's like I'm underwater. I don't want to go anywhere, I don't want to do anything. I can't carry on a conversation with a person like normal, and my TV volume is way past 11. It's all I can do not to break down at the pharmacy.

This is how mad I was: I asked to speak with the pharmacist to make sure the antibiotics weren't going to set off a reaction.

I trust pharmacists.

I do not trust "Doctors."

Wise words from Keith Richards...and he should know. He's done just about every bad thing to himself and he's still kicking.

Okay, so you'd think at this point I'd just drive home and take my meds and write a funny blog about nonsense that only happens to me.

Nope, we are not done.

Outside the pharmacy, I realize my rage is so strong it's now affecting my intestinal system.

It is an 11 minute drive from the pharmacy to my house. That's taking into consideration hitting at least two of the multiple traffic lights on the way. I judged the urgency, weighed it against my loathing for public restrooms, and decided to try and get home.

And that's when I got behind the SLOWEST CAR ON THE WHOLE DAMN ROAD. Like "what the hell dude! At least get close to the speed limit!"

As a result, I hit the first three lights on RED. By the second one, I knew I wasn't making it home. NEVER FEAR, KWIK TRIP's NEAR! I had two lights between me and the nearest KT.

Of course, I hit both the lights on red. By that last one I was yelling out my window, "COME ON!" in a voice that can only be described as desperate.

I got to the Kwik Trip, parked my car, and raced as fast as I dared to the door. However, there's an unwritten rule at Kwik Trip: You must keep the door open for the person behind you. It's the way we are, Midwest Nice. So even though I was, in all honesty, hanging on by the tiniest of threads, I held the door open for a guy who, I SWEAR, slowed his pace once he saw me holding the door.

COME ON!

Finally, I get into the bathroom, lock that door behind me, and let loose a hot steaming flood of rage from my bowels. It took several minutes to fully deshit my colon, and my relief was, unlike the crap with my ear, real and lasting.

I got home and went to cry on hubby's shoulder. Thank goodness for him. After that, I took my antibiotics for an infection I DO NOT HAVE, and I turned on "Downton Abbey" and that was the rest of my day.

Dr. House, we need you! I'm pretty sure you could kick my ear "doctors" ass, even with the cane!