Otitis Media

It's the Fourth of July--a celebration of national independence or a jingoistic holiday designed to rack up drunk driving charges and consume obscene amounts of pork and beef. I suppose it depends on your political affiliation and your feelings toward Walmart. As a child it meant watermelon, sunburns and an eternity of twangy country music. In my twenties I usually "welcomed" the holiday by drinking too many Fat Tires and charring some ribs on the old Webber. Now a days I could take it or leave it. If I party and hear some live music-great, if not, at least I wake up on the 5th without a hangover and I can resume my summer. Today was an atypical Fourth so it feels rant worthy. Although I wouldn't consider myself a hypochondriac, I'm not the healthiest bucket in the closet. My father used to affectionately call me Typhoid Mary because I was always getting everyone sick at the holidays. My training as an MA has created a borderline-OCD- handwashing- monster. Despite my germ-a-phobic ways, I have acquired the newest throat virus plaguing the city. I've been warbling out words in a voice that sounds like a cross between Peter Brady and Bea Arthur. The mucus I am coughing up could adhere wall paper and I have the red scratchy eyes of a chronic pot smoker. Just as I'm hitting my threshold of nosebleeds, puberty voice and lung butter, my ears start feeling like a pair of over-filled water balloons rolling around in my head. When I burp it's in stereo and it makes a little bubble like a Culligan water cooler. Plus, there's the added yumminess of waking up to a wet pillow and realizing the cat had nothing to do with it. I had enough today and after a phone consult with Dr. Miller, I went to an urgent care center. The doc said I have Otitis Media. My right ear is pretty congested and the left one is really infected. He said the left ear drum is bulging and leaking fluid. Fabulous. You tell me I have a condition that sounds like the name for a Latin teacher's cat. Can't you picture the lady...Hillary Clinton haircut, a sweater with ABC's on it, and a DVD collection of every Jane Austen movie and Ken Burns documentary ever made. I don't want to hear this shit. To loosely paraphrase Ouiser from Steel Magnolias, ear infections "are evil and must be destroyed." Well, I've griped and moaned long enough. I had my WOO moment. Now I'm going to exploit my ill fortune and eat some more butterscotch pudding.