HERE, THERE & ELSEWHERE. Ear tiger

Bins has gone back to India for a couple of months. I go with him to Boston on the Peter Pan Bus, see him off at Logan Airport and return to Elsewhere a couple of hours later. As I enter the apartment, I feel a slight tickle in my left ear. I'm home alone with no one to watch me. So I stick my index finger into my ear and relieve the itch. Then I forget all about it.

One day later, my ear begins to hurt. Nothing very special to begin with. Just a little twinge, like a puppy whining on its first night in a new home. I pay very little attention to this mild complaint. By the next day, however, the whine has grown into a howl. "What's this?" I ask myself. "Why are you hurting, Ear? Surely there's nothing seriously wrong with you?" Instead of replying, a small area just within the external entrance to my ear begins to throb with pain. Still, it's very hard for me to believe that I could possibly have damaged my ear merely by scraping it with the blunt tip of my finger. My nails are short and I usually keep them filed down, with no jagged ends.

Meanwhile, Bins has been calling along the way. First from the airport in Boston, then at the half-way point from the airport in Munich, then from New Delhi, to say he's arrived. He tells me there's a thunderstorm in progress. I tell him it's raining in Elsewhere too. I don't bother to mention my ear. I still cannot believe that there's anything wrong with it, even though the pain has now become a sharp, angry scream. I have been dosing myself with Ibuprofen. One every four or five hours. The pain ebbs and flows with the pills. My ear is swollen though not very visibly. The side of my face looks a little puffy.

I signed up for health care last year. Even so, I refuse to believe that a tiny little scratch inside my ear can possibly be worth the attentions of a doctor. By the end of the week, it's like I have a tiger sitting inside my ear. Whenever the Ibuprofen wears off, it begins to gnaw at the tender skin just inside the canal. I tell Bins about it and he gets quite furious. "ARE YOU WAITING TO GO DEAF??" he wants to know. I promise him that I'll go see a doctor.

But in fact the first doctor I see is my sister who drives up from Hartford, where she now lives, to rescue me from myself. She retired several years ago but she can recognize a lunatic when she sees one. She hauls me back to Hartford with her and we visit a Walk-In clinic. It does not accept out-of-state health schemes. So she pays a small fortune on my behalf. A slender young Nepali doctor peers into the side of my head, confirms that my external auditory canal is infected, and makes out a prescription for anti-biotic drops. I apply them when we get home. I lie on my side, feeling extremely silly. One tiny scratch! All this drama! But the tiger in my ear growls softly as he drowns, "Pay attention to pain," he says. "It always means something."

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