The Cotton Buds of EVIL!!

Or if I was from the states – The Q Tips of EVIL!!

Uh. I’ve just seen Judy Finnegan gouging around in a nostril (hers) when she thought she wasn’t on camera. Come now Judy, you’re ALWAYS on camera.

I’m getting so fed up with my ear. After my previous visit to the doctor to get said ear sorted out, it still hadn’t cleared up and I woke up this morning with it aching horribly and my jaw was all gammy. It’s my Dad’s birthday today and so I had to go out to lunch with him, so appointments today would be tricky. I phoned the doctor to try and book an appointment for next week. A ridiculously over enthusiastic receptionist booked me in for 11.40 this morning almost before I had a chance to say anything. Thanks. That’s super efficient! Actually, I found the phone number on the internet and somehow managed to phone the sexual health clinic by accident. I realise now, in retrospect that my saying “Oh, sorry, I wanted the number for the surgery” might have sounded as though I was chickening out with some kind of personal wart problem. Stupid sexual health clinic…

I’d got booked in with this doctor I hadn’t heard of before. She had a name like a Bond villain, which I went around the house saying in my ‘exciting voice’. (Which I use to say ‘Doctor Evil’ and also ‘Cheesy peas’… for some reason) I’d love to tell you what it was, but in the light of what else I’m about to say about her, I probably shouldn’t.

So once again, I find myself in the surgery, wondering what everyone else has. My doctors' surgery used to have this numbered ticket thing and you had to wait for the buzzer by the doctors' names to go off like one of those horrendous bell alarm clocks. Now they’ve replaced it with yet another irritating system, which is at least a bit clearer. Your name pops up on one of those light box screen things, which I find slightly embarrassing. I, like everyone else, enjoy playing the ‘match the name to the person’ game. (And if I’m really bored, the ‘guess their aliment’ game) The appearance of a random name is sadly accompanied by a noise carefully geared to draw everyone’s attention and rouse dozing elderly people with hearing problems. It sounds like the bloody 3 minute warning. You’re feeling nervy enough as it is, knowing that a severe poking and prodding in one of your many cavities is headed this way. The last thing you need is a noise reminiscent of a fog-horn blast going off at 2 minute intervals hurling you from your plastic chair into an exciting martial arts fighting stance.

Finally with an ear-splitting blast it’s my turn and I do the ‘dead man walking’ bit down the massive long corridor to this woman’s door. I open the door and there’s a woman with a serious moustache sitting there. Now, I am a woman with a moustache. It’s very unattractive unless I spend time bleaching and trimming (and even then, it’s not the most appealing part of me.) Hers was only small. (Like Hitler’s, I’m afraid to say.) I reeled slightly but was able to cover it. She also had chronic dandruff (not on the moustache, thankfully). I felt really sorry for her, because in her job, she must have people like me coming in and doing double takes all day. It was a bit like going to a dentist who sports a mouthful of misshapen grotty teeth. I kept thinking, can’t she prescribe anything for that? Imagine if you went to the doctor to ask them if there was anything you could do about the excess hair on your upper lip and she turned out to be your GP. Would you make up some phantom ailment or just go for it whilst stammering ‘not that there’s anything wrong with a moustache, but it doesn’t really suit me…’

She turned out to be brilliant, despite the... you know… She peered into my ear using one of those strange mini cones with a light on the end and muttered something about ‘clear discharge’ which I think is what doctors say when you aren’t looking quite uncomfortable enough. After a couple of seconds with the cone poking seemingly into my very brain, she fixes me with a look and asks me if I use cotton buds. I do, but there’s something about the look that makes me want to lie, like when they used to ask me if I smoked and I would say ‘no….’ in a drawn out fashion. That’s an outright lie I usually saved for my father. I admitted my use of cotton buds and she beat me about the face and neck with the ear cone light until I cried and begged forgiveness at her feet. Well, not quite. But I did feel bad about my gouging habits and received a lecture about how cotton buds should be outlawed.

Anyway it turns out that when you stick a cotton bud in your ear and ‘wank’ it about (yes, my eyebrow rose at the use of that particular verb too, but she styled it out nicely) tiny cotton fibres are released and these have caused the infection within my ear. I have to use a wet flannel to poke about with instead and put cotton wool in my ear when I shower. I’m not sure of the difference between stuffing a cotton bud in your ear and stuffing cotton wool in your ear. She gave me some antifungal cream and sent me away. More potions, just what I need. It has to go in the fridge, so I look forward to seeing it on someone’s piece of toast one of these fine mornings. According to the doc, I have to put the cream on my finger and shove it as far into my ear as I can get it twice a day. You know, I can’t help thinking that it would work much better if I smeared it on a cotton bud first…