A Bug in the Ear
Buzzes while Drilling
A ‘bug in your ear’ is an idiom about that fidgety thought doing cartwheels in your brain until you finally give in and deal with it. It’s possible, though, to have an actual bug fly in your ear, which is what happened to my son. As he wrote from Thailand, “The little bastard just flew directly into my ear like a kamikaze drone that finally found the prey it had been hunting, then proceeded to try to burrow into my brain.”
Luckily, it didn’t get to his brain. It did, however, remain alive in his ear canal for twenty or thirty minutes buzzing and drilling away, seeking organic matter or possibly a stagnant idea. His partner, who is also the mother of his children and a Jill of many trades, did not flinch from the task at hand, but doused the little bugger with a dose of vodka, before plucking him out with tweezers.
The bug turned out to be a cockroach and once extracted, was still alive, slightly inebriated, and missing a leg or two. The patient is fine, but I suspect the experience has inspired him to shop for a sunhat with earflaps.
Oh my god! That’s wild! Some wrath of khan there!
OMG...haha...scary. What a terrible thing to go through. Kudos to them for not rushing to the emergency room. What a brave wife! As an aside, when we visited Vietnam years ago, I had a horrible tooth ache. Didn't go to the dentist there though because the spinal surgeon who was in our travel group told me he'd heard that a guy had an extraction there and ended up with a paralized face. He took me to a pharmacy instead. No prescription necessary for anything you might need or want. (could be different now) Obtained a mild painkiller and made it to my dentist back home. The "paralyzed face" story was probably bogus in any case. Although, I did see "dentists" working on people...right on the sidewalks of Hanoi. We loved our visit...one of the best traveling experiences I've ever had...aside from the toothache.