Stick It In Your Ear........

All of my growing up years, I was told to keep sharp objects away from my face. The eyes, ears, nose, and mouth were very sensitive areas…just don’t mess around there.

I did however have one caveat: in a day when language was less blunt than it is today, I would, when angered by one of my young friends, holler “Aw, just stick it in your ear!” I didn’t really think it would be good for a kid to stick stuff in his ear, but it felt good to say it.

I love the story I heard a while ago of the two brothers. Their parents were ex-patriots in the Middle East. The older boy would often execute his historic right---tormenting his younger brother. At dinner one evening he faked cramming a piece of olive up his nose. The younger brother followed suit and very effectively lodged the olive segment high in his nostril. An emergency room doctor extracted it. Not long later, it was the ol’ stick-the-carrot-in-the-ear trick….with the same result. As the same doctor fished for the carrot chunk in the little guy’s ear, he turned to the dad and said, “Sir, you have got to teach this boy where his mouth is!”

Ears are big (well, some are big, but all are significant). The two unique appendages that bracket one’s head capture a world of intonation, information, melody, rancor, sweet nothings…and so on. Hearing is a primary way of understanding. Jesus of Nazareth often concluded his insightful (sometimes in-your-face) comments with “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” The suggestion is, I think, that there’s a difference between listening and hearing.

It’s the Army master sergeant bawling, “Awright, troops, hear this!” or a mom saying, “Jimmy, did you hear me?” Sometimes we can’t hear and sometimes we won’t. One is a challenge and the other is a choice. I’ve had much more experience with the latter…until a few weeks ago.

Visiting friends in Illinois and playing wiffle baseball with our 6 year old grandson, Cameron Foth, I suddenly lost hearing in my right ear. The emergency room doctor described it as “sudden onset hearing loss.” Of course, I knew that. What I didn’t know was “why”…and neither did (do) they. It just happens to folks out of the blue every now and again. It’s an inner ear thing, and sometimes the hearing returns. Often, it doesn’t. Mostly it is treated for a time with oral steroids to see if it helps.

Having been told that quite likely the nerve in the inner ear was damaged, and hearing wouldn’t come back, I sought a second opinion with encouragement from Ruth and another good friend. The Johns Hopkins University Medical Center in Baltimore, MD is #1 in the United States, as is their Ear, Nose, Throat Clinic. The chairman of the dept. said, “Ah, but we do have an option.”

Whereupon, he described what is called an ”intratympanic injection.” That’s an injection of steroids directly through the eardrum into the middle ear to be absorbed into the inner ear. The part of that long word which caught my attention was “—panic.” However, the chances of regaining hearing, he said, were 30 to 50%. Now, I’m not great at math, but that sounded way better than 0%. So…we are going for it. Three shots in three weeks. One down two to go.

Life is a hoot. You never know what’s going to happen next. I know this much: “stick it in your ear” has a whole new meaning to me these days.